Found a Flicker at work excavating a hole in an apple-tree in Bensen’s orchard. I was passing the tree within six feet when I heard a low tapping, accompanied by a continuous muffled whining sound. Turning, I at once saw the bird’s tail projecting from the hole, which was not over five feet above the ground. For a minute or more the pecking and whining continued uninterruptedly, the tail wriggling violently the while. Evidently the bird had carried in the hole to just that point where she had less room to work than she had had before or would have afterwards. In other words, she had just about reached the point where the entrance hole must begin to be expanded into a chamber and to turn downward. It seemed to me that the whining sound expressed rage or impatience. Perhaps it was the Flicker’s form of swearing!
The northern flicker seems to show no very decided preference for any one species of tree in its choice of a nesting site, though I believe it does prefer a dead tree, or a dead stub on a living tree, or a tree that has a soft or partially decayed heart. It has always seemed to me that in New England we find more nests in large apple trees in old orchards than elsewhere, the nest being excavated in the main trunk, or large upright branch, at no great height from the ground. Such trees may have a hard outer shell, but the interior is often more or less soft. Old orchards are becoming scarce in my vicinity, which forces the flickers to look elsewhere. Next in importance here as a common nesting site is the trunk or stub of a dead white pine tree. Mr. Burns (1900) mentions one dead pine “perforated with 25 or 30 holes, most of which were in use at one time or another.” He lists, as favorite trees in the Middle and Eastern States, “apple, sycamore, oak, butternut, cherry, elm, chestnut, maple, poplar, beech, ash, pine, hickory, etc.” In Pennsylvania, he says that J. Warren Jacobs has “found the sycamore to be the favorite, with the apple and maple second, the beech and locust third, oak and cherry fourth, and all other varieties fifth.”
Mr. Burns continues: “From Ohio westward the apple orchard is a favorite with the poplar, willow, maple, oak, elm, walnut, cottonwood, etc., more or less resorted to, according to availability. It very seldom nests in a living coniferous tree, though it has been known to nest in a living red cedar and in dead hemlocks and spruces.”
Telegraph, telephone, and other tall poles, as well as fenceposts, are favorite nesting sites in the prairie regions and other parts of the West, where trees are scarce. Frank L. Farley writes to me that in the timbered country of northern Alberta, “where there are many suitable nesting trees and stubs, the telephone and telegraph poles are frequently used for nesting. These poles are usually cedar and it is assumed that the birds prefer these for nesting, because of the ease with which they can excavate.”
Flickers quite often nest in boxes erected for that purpose and in buildings, much to the annoyance of the owners. I have frequently seen nests in icehouses; these have double walls, the intervening space being filled with sawdust; the birds drill through the outer walls and make their nests in the sawdust. The cornices and walls of many buildings on the farms, as well as the towers of churches and schoolhouses, are perforated, and the eggs laid on the beams or boarding within. Mr. Burns (1900) records the following interesting case:
Mr. Burke H. Sinclair found a nest containing eggs in the garret of the town high school. The birds obtained entrance to this large three-story brick building by means of a displaced brick. As in all infloored lofts it consists of nothing but the parallel rafters, with attached lath and plaster, which forms the ceiling of the room below. This frail floor is about ten inches below the entrance hole, and the nest was situated about one foot from and directly in front of the entrance. The place had evidently been used for several years, there being at least a peck of wood chippings, some fresh, but a large quantity old and discolored with age. The nest was placed between two of the parallel rafters and composed of these chippings, being about six inches thick by eighteen inches in diameter. This material had been all cut from the rafters on the floor and the roof overhead.
A number of other unusual nesting sites have been recorded. F. A. E. Starr tells me of a nest that “was in an old stump two feet high; the six eggs were on a bed of rotten wood at ground level.” Dr. Jonathan Dwight, Jr. (1893), reports a nest that he found on Prince Edward Island; the “nest with fully fledged young was examined in the top of a hollow fence post. No excavation had been made by the bird, and the young were entirely exposed to the weather.” Flickers occasionally nest in natural cavities in trees, where no excavation is needed beyond enlarging the opening, if necessary, or cleaning out the interior. Ned Hollister (1918) reports that a pair of flickers and a pair of house wrens nested in holes in an old stump in a lion’s cage in the National Zoological Park in Washington. Mr. Burns (1900) writes: “It has been found breeding far out on the prairie in an old wagon hub, surrounded by weeds; also in barrels, and one instance of an excavation of the regulation size in a hay stack is on record; another nested in a crevice of an unused chimney for several years; and stranger yet it has been found more than once occupying Kingfisher’s and enlarged Bank Swallow’s burrows.”
The haystack nest is reported by Major Bendire (1895), on the authority of William A. Bryant, of New Sharon, Iowa, as follows:
On a small hill, a quarter of a mile distant from my home, stood a haystack which had been placed there two years previously. The owner, during the winter of 1889-’90, had cut the stack through the middle and hauled away one portion, leaving the other standing with the end smoothly trimmed. The following spring I noticed a pair of yellow-shafted flickers about the stack showing signs of wanting to make it a fixed habitation. One morning a few days later I was amused at the efforts of one of the pair. It was clinging to the perpendicular end of the stack and throwing out chipped hay at a rate to defy competition. This work continued for nearly a week, and in that time the pair had excavated a cavity 20 inches in depth. The entrance was located 8½ feet above ground, and was 2½ inches in diameter and dug back into the stack for 6 inches, where it turned sharply downward and was slightly enlarged at the bottom. On May 28 I took a handsome set of seven eggs from the nest, the eggs lying on a bed of chipped hay. The birds lingered about the stack and by June 14 had deposited another set of eggs. * * * I never could quite understand the philosophy of their peculiar choice of this site, as woodland is abundant here. A well-timbered creek bottom was less than half a mile distant, while large orchards and groves surround the place on every hand.
Kumlien and Hollister (1903) and J. A. Farley (1901) record instances of flickers nesting on hay; in each case the birds bored a hole through the walls of a barn and laid their eggs in a hollow in a pile of hay near the entrance hole. William Brewster (1909) published an account of a flicker’s nest on the open ground, found by some ladies on Cape Cod and seen by him. Beside a sandy road, “fully a quarter of a mile from the nearest house and bordered on both sides by dense woods of pitch pines, the ladies found five eggs of the Flicker lying together in a hollow in the ground within a few feet of the deeply rutted wagon track.” The nest “was a circular, saucer-shaped depression, measuring 21¼ inches across the top, by 3 inches in depth. Dry yellowish sand mixed with fine gravel and wholly free from vegetation of any kind, living or dead, formed its bottom and the gently sloping sides, as well as the surface of the level ground about it for two or three yards in every direction, but a little further back there were weeds and grasses growing sparingly, in slightly richer soil.” Photographs of two nests similarly located may be seen in Bird-Lore, volume 18, page 399, and volume 36, page 105.