1892
July 7
(No 4)
Concord, Massachusetts. 
Mass.
  Concord. Late in May I noticed for the first time a
Flicker's hole - then apparently nearly completed - in a very
rotten stump covered externally with gray lichens and
a species of woody fungus and forming one of seven
upright, diverging stems, the remaining six still living,
and all evidently sprouts from the same roots; this
tree being an ancient white maple which stands on
the edge of the river within a few yards of my boat-
house. The trunk of a tall elm rises through and spreads its top above the maple.
When I first saw the Flicker's hole, there were two other
inhabited nests in this old stump, a Downy Woodpecker's
near the top and, a little lower down, an old hole of
the same species then occupied by a pair of Blue-birds.
The Flicker's nest was still lower down - about ten
feet above the ground.
[margin]History of Flicker's Nest.[/margin]
  The Bluebirds first, and shortly afterwards the Downy
Woodpeckers, reared and took away their young after
which a pair of House Sparrows entered into
possession of the hole which the Downies had just
vacated. Scarcely had the female Sparrow laid her
eggs when a boy attempting to climb the stump
broke it off squarely at the entrance hole of the Flicker's nest.
For two weeks or more previous to this I had daily
started one or the other of the Flickers from the nest
as I passed it on the way to my boat-house but
beyond the fact that their hearing was so keen
that, tread as softly as I might, I could never quite
reach the tree without alarming them and that
during this period (when, as will presently appear,
incubation must have been constantly going on) they were
frequently at work picking at the inside of the