HABITS
The type name auratus is now restricted to the flickers of the South Atlantic and Gulf States, from North Carolina to southern Florida and central Texas north to extreme southern Illinois and Indiana, southeastern Missouri, and southeastern Kansas, because the above Linnaean name was based on birds described by Catesby, which belonged to the smaller southern race.
The habits of the southern flicker are so similar to those of the northern flicker that the following account given for the northern race will serve very well for both. It is a common bird, widely distributed and well known throughout its range. In Florida we found it rather partial to open, burned-over tracts in the flat pine woods, nesting in the charred stumps, but it was also common in more open country in thinly settled regions, where we often found it nesting in isolated trees or dead stubs of palmettos or pines.
W. J. Erichsen (1920) says of its haunts in Chatham County, Ga.: “Wherever there are areas of cut-over lands on which remain an abundance of dead trees this species will be found in large numbers. At all seasons it exhibits a preference for open pine barrens, but, particularly during the breeding season, is occasionally met with about the edges of swamps if they contain suitable nesting sites. It is abundant on all of the wooded islands, particularly Ossabaw island, where I observed it in large numbers in May, 1915. Here it is oftenest seen in the woods close to the salt marsh or adjoining the beach, apparently not frequenting in any numbers the more heavily forested interior of the island.”
Nesting.—Capt. H. L. Harllee writes to me that southern flickers raise two broods in a season in South Carolina and are not very particular as to their nesting sites. They nest in holes of their own excavation in dead trees of many species, 3 to 100 feet from the ground, either in thick woods or in a lone dead tree in an open cultivated field; they also nest in natural cavities in trees. He found one pair of these birds nesting in a hole made by fire in an old burned-out stump; the cavity was about two feet deep and eight inches in diameter; “the opening was slightly arched over with grass growing around it; a small quantity of pine straw was the only lining.”
Arthur H. Howell (1932) says: “The nests are placed in pines, oaks, cabbage palms, or other trees, at heights varying from a few feet to 60 feet above the ground. At Ponce Park, in May, 1925, I observed a Flicker using a hole in a palmetto pile under the dock on the shore of the Halifax River, only 2 feet above the salt water at high tide. Nicholson found a nest 12 inches above the ground in a sawed-off stump of a palmetto on a ditch bank.”
Alexander Sprunt, Jr. (1931), mentions a concentration of hole-nesting birds in a tree in a yard in Beaufort, S. C.; the tree measured only 20 feet in height and contained nests of two pairs of flickers, and one nest each of crested flycatcher, screech owl, and downy woodpecker. “All five cavities were contained in a radius of ten feet, and four were within six feet of each other.”
A. F. Ganier (1926) writes:
While in the suburbs of Chattanooga, Tennessee, last spring, I noticed a Flicker engaged in what appeared to be a hopeless task in the way of nest excavation. An iron water tank, supported by steel columns forty feet high, was fed by a large iron pipe through its bottom, and, to keep this pipe from freezing in winter, it had been encased with a plank shaft two feet square that was filled with cedar sawdust. Our friend Colaptes auratus had evidently sounded the boards, and, sensing easy digging, had drilled a hole in the middle of one side about thirty feet up. When espied, he was enthusiastically pitching out quantities of sawdust, which I presume caved in about as fast as he dug, but during the half hour I was engaged near by there was no let up in the work. About a month later I was again in the vicinity and made it a point to go by the tank. On the ground below the hole was at least a bushel of sawdust, and in a few minutes I had the pleasure of seeing a Flicker enter the hole with food in its mouth, presumably to feed the young that had come to reward his perseverance.
Eggs.—The southern flicker lays five to ten eggs, ordinarily, but shares with its northern relative its reputation as a prolific egg layer; it will continue to lay again and again after being robbed, as many as 30 or 40 eggs and often three or four sets. The eggs are similar to those of the northern flicker, except for a slight difference in size. The measurements of 44 eggs from South Carolina average 28.57 by 22.01 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 30.15 by 24.56 and 24.13 by 20.32 millimeters. These seem to run larger than eggs from farther north.