THE RED-SHAFTED FLICKER. 
ae 
found to timber-line in the Cascades, where shading into next; partially resident 
in winter. 
Authorities.—| Lewis and Clark, Hist. Ex. (1814) Ed. Biddle: Coues, Vol. 
MS yPeuss lta C-.carer, Allen, Bs N. ©: Cy VI. (1881), p. 128. (DP). eC) D= 
Sit, OE, SSS S85 Ife 1a 
Specimens.—(U. of W.) P'. Prov. B. BN. 
NATURE has not dealt justly with the East-side Flicker in the matter 
of providing an abundance of dead timber for nesting sites. What more 
natural, then, than that the stinted bird should joyfully fall upon the first 
“frame” houses and riddle them with holes? The front door of a certain 
country parsonage near North Yakima testifies to at least one pastoral vaca- 
tion, by the presence of three large Flicker holes in its panels. The church 
hard by is dotted with tin patches which conceal this bird’s handiwork; and the 
mind recalls with glee how the irreverent Flicker on a summer Sunday replied 
to the parson’s fifthly, by a mighty rat-at-at-at-at on the weather siding. The 
district schoolhouse of a neighboring township is worst served of all, for forty- 
one Flicker holes punctuate its weather-beaten sides—reason enough, surely, 
for teaching the young idea of that district how to shoot. Indeed, the school 
directors became so incensed at the conduct of these naughty fowls that they 
offered a bounty of ten cents a head for their destruction. But it is to laugh to 
see the fierce energy with which these birds of the plains, long deprived of 
legitimate exercise, fall to and perforate such neglected outposts of learning. 
The bird becomes obsessed by the idea of filling a particular wall full of holes, 
and no ingenuity of man can deter him. If work during union hours is dis- 
couraged, the bird returns stealthily to his task at four a. m., and chisels out a 
masterpiece before breakfast. If the gun speaks, and one bird falls a martyr to 
the sacred cause, another comes forward promptly to take his place, and there 
is always some patriotic Flicker to uphold the rights of academic research. 
Of course the situation is much relieved in the timbered foothills and 
along the wooded banks of streams, where rotten stubs abound. The Flicker is 
at home, also, to the very limit of trees in the Cascade Mountains. Nests are 
ordinarily excavated late in April, and any tree or stump may serve as host. In 
Okanogan County I saw a Flicker’s nest in a stump only two feet high, and its 
eggs rested virtually upon the ground. Others occur in live willows, cotton- 
woods, and apple trees, as well as in dead pines—the last named occasionally at 
a height of sixty or seventy feet. They nest also in the walls of buildings, in 
which case they lug in the chips to lay on beam or sill, and so prevent the eggs 
from rolling. In Chelan County a nest was found in a bank of fine earth among 
those of a colony of Bank Swallows. True to tradition the birds had gone down- 
ward after entering this bank. Excavation proved to be such a pleasant task 
that they had dug a hole not only eighteen inches deep but two feet long and one 
wide, measured horizontally. Three cubic feet of earth these industri- 
