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Volume XVII March- April, 1915 Number 2 
ADAPTABILITY IN THE CHOICE OF NESTING SITES 
OF SOME WIDELY SPREAD BIRDS 
By CLARENCE HAMILTON KENNEDY 
WITH THREE DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR 
O NE OF the most interesting things I have had the pleasure of observing 
while residing in the treeless intermountain region of the West, was the 
adaptability in manner of nesting of various kinds of birds. Birds 
which in the mesophytic Mississippi Valley were seldom known to nest except 
in trees, nested in the western desert almost wherever they could get a safe 
site. Robins on this frontier of their habitat nested in vines by the house door 
or even on rafters in the barns. Doves nested on the ground, while Flickers 
nested in telephone poles, and there is hardly a desert home but shows in its 
perforated gables the Flicker’s attempts to nest. Indeed it is reported that 
in central Oregon, in the region of Vale, Flickers nest even in holes in the 
banks as do Kingfishers. 
It is interesting to note in passing that these few birds, which have such 
plastic habits, are also those which are most widely spread across the conti- 
nent. It is also interesting to note that each of these birds in its own group 
has a rather wide range of diet, another point of elasticity permitting it to out- 
range its immediate relations. These are species which have but little sensi- 
tiveness toward the encroachments of man. In fact, in the West the Doves, 
Robins, and Flickers, especially in the irrigated sections, have cast their lot 
with man in the newly conquered wastes and have given their assistance in the 
conflict for the mastery of those weed and insect pests which have always 
threatened agriculture. Perhaps it is imagination, but I have many times felt, 
as I have watched these semi-domestic species in their tireless work about 
barnyards and orchards, that they had a more plastic mentality than those 
of their relatives which depend on shyness, concealment, and speed to protect 
