BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES. 
117 
and consisted entirely of dry grasses in quite limited quantity. This is 
the earliest one ever found in this locality. Generally, the nest is 
completed for oviposition during the last of this month, or the beginning 
of the succeeding. My son, Alan F. Gentry, on the fourth of May of 
the same year, met with one in a hollow branch of the chestnut, in 
Germantown. This was placed about twenty feet up, in a cavity whose 
width at the mouth was four and a half inches, and whose depth was nine 
inches. It was lined with a few leaves and fragments of decayed wood, 
and contained four eggs, which were partially incubated. Another com- 
plement of eggs, five in number, before us, was found May 17th, 1880, 
near Granville, N. Y., by F. T. Pember, Esq. It was placed in an iso- 
lated maple, about twenty feet from the ground, in what was once the 
home of a j^air of Flickers. The bottom of the cavity was lined with 
straw and grass of last year’s dejrosit, little, if any, fresh materials being 
noticeable. The diameter of the base was seven inches, and depth, twenty 
inches. The drawing represents a nest in a decayed branch of the red 
maple. The female bird is considerably reduced, and placed on the edge 
of the cavity, looking outwardly ; whereas the male, in perfectly erect atti- 
tude, and with dignified demeanor, stands on a bent branch, at some 
distance from his home, engaged, as it were, in surveying the surrounding 
scenery. He is shoAvn in his jauntiest feathers, and with his fair propor- 
tions diminished but one-fourth. Owing to the difficulty encountered in 
figuring the eggs in situ, we have been compelled to show a single speci- 
men, the natural size, and on a tinted background below and to tbe left 
of the picture. 
The nest being ready, the female is not dilatory about laying. Unlike 
most of the birds which we have previously described, she does not deposit 
with much regularity. Sometimes the eggs are laid on consecutive days, 
and, at other times, on each alternate day ; never more than one being 
deposited daily. This business being accomplished, the female proceeds at 
once to incubate. After she has been thus occupied for a varying period 
of time, seldom less than two hours at a sitting, she summons her mate to 
