THE OOLOQitT 



201 



OZARK APARTMENT HOUSES 



Every river valley has its deadened 

 timber, and it is very hard to find a 

 river valley or even creek valley in 

 the Ozarks in which there is not a 

 great deal of deadened timber, most 

 of which is of great height and size. 

 Along the Flat Creek and James and 

 White River bottoms in Stone, Barry, 

 and Taney County, Missouri, fome 

 years ago there were a great number 

 of these huge sycamore trees which 

 were veritable bird apartment houses. 

 In the last few years they have much 

 decreased in number on account of 

 age, and many serious windstorms 

 that have felled them in numbers. 



My wife and I spent two days on 

 Flat Creek, June 20 and 21, 1923, 

 camping just beneath one of the larg- 

 est of the remaining of these huge 

 veterans. It stood like a silvery senti- 

 nel over the valley, towering far over 

 any living tree in the valley. I judge 

 that it is yet at least 125 feet in 

 height, and is broken off so that the 

 topmost part is nearly 20 inches in 

 diameter. It had a main trunk, and 

 two huge side limbs. The trunk at 

 the ground must have been nearly 

 eight feet in diameter. 



Minute study with my binoculars 

 showed that there were just 34 holes 

 bored into the body of that tree, none 

 of them lower than forty feet. They 

 entered from every direction of the 

 compass, and on all of the forks of 

 the tree. As we loafed about our 

 camp those two days 1 watched the 

 tree until I located just seven nesting 

 pairs of birds in that one tree. There 

 were four pairs of Flickers, two of 

 Red-headed Woodpeckers, and one of 

 Sparrow Hawks, all living in very 

 amiable companionship. As we 

 walked up the road one evening we 

 saw a Red-head tapping on one of the 

 limbs. Mrs. Flicker stuck her head 

 out of the liole and said something 



that sounded like "Come in. Come in, 

 Come in," to which Mrs. Red-head re- 

 plied with something not liked, for 

 at once there arose an unearthly 

 clamor from both of the birds. 



Some forty feet away was a smaller 

 tree about 80 feet in height which 

 held 24 holes, but it was so closely 

 grown about by other living trees that 

 I could not find out how many birds 

 occupied it. 



During the two days we identified 

 68 species of birds, and 28 nests, none 

 of which we collected, as we were not 

 hunting birds eggs. 



Johnson A. Neff, 

 Marionville, Missouri. 



BOOKS RECEIVED 



British Birds, Volume XVll, No. 5. 

 October, 1923, pp 98—101. "Some Ob- 

 servations on Cuckoos in 1923", by 

 Edgar Chance. This is an interest- 

 ing paper based on experiences of the 

 writer during the season of 1923, and 

 gives observations relating nine dif- 

 ferent eggs of this parasite species. 



R. M. B. 



PRAIRIE WARBLER 



A 1923 breeding colony of Prairie 

 Warbler was found in Southern New 

 Jersey, containing 20 nests; also a 

 nest of Hooded Warbler, a nest of 

 Black and White Warbler, and a 

 Whip-poor-will's nest, four nests of 

 Marsh Hawk and a Short-eared-Owl's. 

 T. E. McMullen, 

 Camden, N. J. 



