History of 
Flicker 1 s 
Nest 
and. from a hole in the neighboring bank, keeping under water 
the entire distance, at others showing themselves boldly 
and swimming across and up the river. They have shelled 
large numbers of mussels on the barrels which float the house 
Concerning the young Woodpeckers, I will summarize 
as follows'. 
Late in May I noticed for the first time a Flicker’ 
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 the old stump, a Downy Woodpecker’s near the top and, a 
little lower down, an old hole of the wame species then 
occupied by a pair of Bluebirds. The Flicker’s nest was 
still lower down — about ten feet above the ground. 
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 hold which the Downies had just vacated. Scarcely had 
thejfemale 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 
