The Flicker 251 



ingly interesting and amusing sight to see a couple of males 

 paying their addresses to a coy and coquettish female ; the ap- 

 parent shyness of the suitors as they sidle up to her and as 

 quickly retreat again, the sly glances given as one peeps from 

 behind a limb watching the other playing bo-peep seem 

 very human." 



The flicker is not very choice in the selection of a nesting 

 place. Any old stump or a partly decayed limb of a tree, near 

 the outskirts of a forest, along the banks^of a creek, beside a 

 country road, or in an old orchard will answer its purpose. At 

 Buzzard's Roost favorite places for them are the dead limbs in 

 the tops of the sycamore trees in the banks of Fall Creek. Mr. 

 Butler in his Birds of Indiana says, "The nicker, with its 

 curved bill can not chisel its way into trees as the other species 

 do," and that "It uses either a natural or artificial cavity." It 

 is true that the nicker has a slightly curved bill but I have 

 not observed that "it can not chisel its way into trees as the 

 other species do." On the contrary, I regard it as quite an 

 adept in doing this. Wilson takes much pains in describing the 

 ingenuity and perseverance of these birds in digging out their 

 nests. "I have seen," he says, "where they have dug first five 

 inches straight forward, and then downward more than twice 

 that distance through a solid black oak." C. Albert Reed, ed- 

 itor of American Ornithology says: "The birds take turns in 

 the excavating for a home, and the work proceeds quite rap- 

 idly. Sometimes the chips are carried to a distance and depos- 

 ited, but oftener they are strewn about directly under the nest. 

 They drill into the tree for about four inches, then downward 

 to the depth of from six inches to two feet." Mrs. Wheelock 

 in her most excellent book, Birds of California, says of the 

 red-shafted flicker, a close cousin to the golden-shafted that 

 "Both male and female birds share in the excavation, working 

 in turns of about twenty minutes each. The site having been 

 chosen, the male clings to the surface and marks with his bill 

 a more or less regular circle in a series of dots, then begins 

 excavating inside this area, using his bill, not with a sidewise 

 twist, as do many of the woodpecker family, but striking 

 downwards and prying off the chips as with a pickaxe." 



The eggs of the flicker usually are laid upon the fine chips 





