“Two days after the bout of the two males, I saw two females engaged in the dance in one of our pear trees. It lasted only a few minutes, and I heard no notes. Not long after the dance of the two females a prolonged ‘sexual flight’ took place. It lasted five or ten minutes, as nearly as I could tell, with a few short intervals of resting. I could at no time determine the sexes of the two birds thus engaged, but occasionally a snatch of faint song was heard (wick-wick-wick), and I assume that they were male and female. They flew rather slowly and kept only a few feet apart. It was evident that the spacing was intentional and that the pursuer made no attempt to catch up with the other. The flight covered a territory of several acres. It was a graceful and interesting performance.
“I supposed at the time that this sexual flight indicated that the affair was completed, but later that afternoon I several times saw a male and two females together, the females posturing and wick-up-ing, the male motionless. The females showed no enmity toward each other and did not face each other, as the males of two days before did. They kept rather farther apart. At one time a second male appeared and stayed about for a time, but he disappeared, apparently without becoming a serious factor in the situation.
“Three days later a pair of flickers, male and female, were feeding peacefully together on the lawn in the morning and in the afternoon, and I judged that the marital arrangements of at least two of my flickers had been completed.”
More active courtship on the part of a female flicker is thus described in some notes from Lewis O. Shelley: “On April 24, coincident with a male flicker’s message from the elm stub, a female and a second male appeared. All three were later in the cherry tree by our garden, perched on branches some three feet apart. The female took the initiative in the following activities and, perched crosswise of the branch, often bobbed and ducked up and down, then crosswise of the branch jerked to left, right, left, right, head cocked erect and with tail fully spread. At times the males, less actively, did likewise, but for the most part perched noncommittally, silent and still, giving but few calls. At one time, after the female had displayed intermittently several times, and when the males had been still for some five minutes, she sidled up to the nearest male and again displayed with much wing-fluttering and tail-spreading and sidewise twitchings; then the same to the other male who flew when her actions of bobbing and bowing face to face commenced. Not to be outdone, or so affronted, she flew after him, then the second male followed.”
C. W. Leister (1919) noticed an aerial courtship evolution of the flicker, of which he says: “When first noticed, he was about fifty feet from the ground and ascending in peculiar, bumpy, and jerky spirals. This was maintained until a height of about 350-400 feet was reached, when, after a short pause, a reverse of practically the same performance was gone through. The Flicker (Colaptes auratus luteus), for as such he was identified by this time, then alighted in a cherry tree, just above a female that we had previously failed to notice, and completed the performance by going through his more familiar courting antics.”
A recrudescence of the amatory instinct is sometimes seen in fall. On September 22, 1933, a clear, warm morning, a pair of flickers, male and female, were watched for some time as they performed their courtship dance on the top of one of my chimneys, where there might have been some warmth remaining from a fire that had since died out. They danced around on all four sides of the chimney, always facing each other, both of them bowing and swaying the head and neck, or whole body, from side to side, with the neck extended and the bill pointing almost straight upward. Sometimes they stopped for a few seconds, holding the upright posture, or one performed while the other posed. There was no wing or tail display that I could see. Lewis O. Shelley tells me that he has seen flickers in courtship display while the young were just leaving the nest.
Nesting.—Soon after mating is accomplished the choice for a nesting site is made, and often the selection is made during courtship, especially if a nesting cavity of the previous year is to be used. Probably the female usually makes the final decision, though there is some evidence to indicate that in many cases the male selects the site and persuades his mate to accept it.
Miss Althea R. Sherman (1910) made some very thorough studies of the nesting habits of the northern flicker at National, Iowa, in some boxes so arranged on her barn that she could observe the home life of the birds at close range. The male and the female had been occupying two different boxes as roosting places, and the eggs were laid in the box occupied by the male, from which it became evident “that the male bird chose the nesting place, and persuaded his mate to lay her eggs there, even when she was inclined to nest elsewhere, and when she had a box quite as good as his.”
Often the male “stakes out his claim,” so to speak, in the vicinity of an old nest, where, during the courtship period, he utters his loud mating call for several days, or even weeks, before the female answers the invitation. Then, after mating is accomplished, his chosen mate may or may not accept his choice of a nesting site. The desirability of the nesting site may in such cases influence the female’s choice of a mate, for she is as much interested in having a comfortable and safe home as in choosing a handsome husband.
Having chosen the site, the pair set about repairing the old cavity or excavating a new one, at which both birds work diligently for anywhere from a week to three weeks, depending on the conditions they find. Mr. Shelley tells me that, in his experience with several nests, the nesting cavity is completed from a week to a fortnight before the eggs are laid. The chips are usually, but not always, carried away to some distance from the nest tree, but often chips are merely scattered about the base of the tree. William Brewster (1936) gives the following account of rather peculiar behavior of a flicker while excavating its nest: