Part 36

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:

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.

Mr. Burns’s data show that the height of the nest from the ground varies in middle and eastern States from 2 to 60 feet, and in central western States from ground level to 90 feet. His accumulated data on the measurements of nesting cavities show that the depth of the excavation is “greatest in New York and New England (10 to 36 inches), Illinois (14 to 24 inches), Pennsylvania (10 to 18 inches), and Minnesota (9 to 18 inches).” Probably the depth of the cavity depends on the quality of the wood and the age of the nest; when an old cavity is used, it is usually deepened somewhat. Dr. H. C. Oberholser (1896) gives the measurements of four Ohio nests; the total depth varied from 7 to 18 inches; the diameter of the entrance varied from 2.00 by 2.00 to 4.00 by 4.00 and averaged 2.94 by 2.72 inches. Mr. Burns (1900) says the diameter of the cavity near the bottom varies from 4.50 to 10.00, and averages 7.67 inches. No nesting material is taken in from outside, but enough fine chips are left in the bottom of the hole to make a soft bed, in which the eggs are partially buried. Carl W. Buchheister tells me that he once found a nest “the bottom of which was 6 inches below the ground level and 12 inches below the opening, a round hole which was 6 inches above the ground. There was but one egg.”

_Eggs._--The flicker is notorious as a prolific egg layer, but under ordinary circumstances, when not disturbed, the average set consists of six to eight eggs. Incubated sets of as few as three or four have been found, sets of nine and ten are not very rare, and as many as 17 have been found in a nest at one time; the large numbers may be products of two females. Mr. Burns (1900) records the contents of 169 sets of the northern flicker as 11 sets of four, 16 sets of five, 35 sets of six, 34 sets of seven, 38 sets of eight, 17 sets of nine, 13 sets of ten, 3 sets of twelve, and one each of thirteen and fourteen. Major Bendire (1895) states that Steward Ogilby, of Staten Island, N. Y., reports “finding a brood of not less than nineteen young Flickers in one nest, all alive and apparently in good condition.”

If robbed of its eggs, the flicker will continue to lay new sets for a long time. Dr. Barton W. Evermann (1889) “obtained thirty-seven eggs in forty-nine days from a ‘yellowhammer’ which had its nest near my house. The eggs were in seven sets, five, five, five, six, seven, four, and five eggs respectively.” J. Parker Norris (1888) took five sets of six eggs each from a nest in Pennsylvania between May 16 and June 18. Several other similar cases of persistent laying have been reported, all of which indicate that an egg is laid each day and that the birds begin at once to replace the lost set. Mr. Burns (1900) lists a number of such cases, where no nest egg was left to induce the bird to keep on laying; the largest number reported was 48 eggs in 65 days. My neighbor, Charles L. Phillips, tried the experiment of taking one egg each day, leaving one as a nest egg; he holds the extraordinary record of having taken 71 eggs from one nest in 73 days; the poor bird rested only two days in the long strain of over two months.

Eggs of the flicker have sometimes been found in the nests of other birds. In an old orchard, not far from my home, I once found a flicker’s egg in a bluebird’s nest, with five eggs of the latter; and in another cavity in the same tree was a tree swallow’s nest containing five eggs of the swallow and an egg of the flicker. As this was in a remote locality, it is hardly likely that the eggs were placed there artificially, and the chances are that the flicker’s nest had been destroyed and she was forced to lay in the nearest available cavity. Mr. Burns (1900) says: “A similar instance is recorded by E. G. Elliot, Bradford, Mass., May 16th, ’84, of a set of five eggs of bluebird and one of flicker, nest of grass and feathers. Records of European house sparrow and red-headed woodpecker eggs in freshly excavated quarters with one or more eggs of the Flicker are not uncommon, and upon investigation the latter proved to be the aggrieved party in every instance.” He also tells of a flicker that laid an egg in a mourning dove’s nest.

The eggs of the flicker are pure lustrous white, with a brilliant gloss; the shell is translucent, and, when fresh, the yolk shows through it, suffusing the egg with a delicate pinkish glow, which is very beautiful.

The shape is quite variable, but the majority are ovate; some are short-ovate or elliptical-ovate, some nearly oval, and some rarely somewhat pointed. The measurements of 57 eggs average 26.85 by 20.58 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =30.48= by 22.86, 28.19 by =24.38=, =24.45= by 21.34, and 27.68 by =19.05= millimeters.

_Young._--The period of incubation of the flicker has been said to be from 14 to 16 days. Miss Sherman’s (1910) careful observations on marked eggs, laid on known dates, indicate a shorter period. From some former nests she had learned “that sometimes the eggs hatched in nine days, but more frequently in ten days after the laying of the last egg.” In these cases, incubation may have begun before the set was complete, or the eggs may have received some heat from the body of the male, for she said that, in at least one case, “while the eggs were being laid, and before incubation began the male roosted in the box with the eggs.” According to a later observation, “the exact time for incubation had been twelve days, three hours and fifty-two minutes. The seventh egg hatched four hours later making its period of incubation eleven days and eight hours nearly.” After another similar experience with the hatching of nine marked eggs, which extended over a period from 5:40 a. m. one day until 10:48 a. m. the next day, she says: “Roughly speaking, then, the time that our Flickers take for incubation is from eleven to twelve days.”

Her observations showed that the duties of incubation are shared by both sexes, that the male usually incubates during the night, but “by day the duties of incubation seem to be shared about equally between the two birds, who are close sitters, the eggs seldom being found alone. Of the length of the sittings no adequate record has been kept, but those lasting from one hour and a half to two hours have been noted.”

Miss Sherman (1910) noted that “the usual time for depositing the eggs in the nest appears to be the hour between five and six o’clock in the morning,” though in one case an egg was laid between 11 a. m. and 4 p. m.

Some of her observations on the young follow:

Until the young are about eleven days old, they lie in a circle in the nest, their long necks stretched over each other, then for nearly a week they press against the side of the nest. At seventeen or eighteen days of age, their claws having acquired a needlelike sharpness, they begin to cling to the wall of the nest, and when three weeks old they are able to climb to the hole and be fed while the parent hangs outside.

Although the eyes of the nestlings are not open until they are ten days old yet these organs are by no means dormant. An easy proof of this is made by placing the hand noiselessly over the entrance hole when they are no more than three or four days old, and are lying apparently asleep; up comes every head and they beg for food, getting none they soon sleep, when the experiment may be repeated, gaining from the young the same response that is given when a parent darkens the hole.

That cry of the young which is so often described as a hissing sound, begins very soon after they are hatched. At first exceedingly faint it soon grows stronger, and is uttered day and night for two weeks. A parent upon taking its place to brood these wailing nestlings begins to croon a lullaby and continues this musical murmur until it falls asleep, which is often quite soon. It has no effect in lessening the noise of the youngsters, yet the parent faithfully renders its cradle song until the young cease to make this noise which is about the time they begin to show fear. Of other cries that they make, there is the chuckling noise uttered when the little one is in the act of seizing the food-bearing bill, and there is a cry that sounds like a whine. Still another one is a note of alarm given when the young are disturbed by some such thing as the opening of the trap door. This uttered in unison has a very theatrical effect strongly suggesting the chorus of the stage. After they have commenced to move about freely in the nest they make much of the time a pleasant sound like a chatter or quack, as if talking to each other. And lastly comes the grown-up Flicker “pe-ap”, which they begin to call as soon as they climb to the hole. * * *

Some broods are much more quarrelsome than others. Their battle ground is in the vicinity of the hole. The one in possession of the hole maintains his supremacy there by occasional withdrawals of his head from the hole in order to deliver vigorous blows on the heads of all within his reach. This is the case with the stronger ones, the weaker ones frequently are driven from the vantage place. When the hole is large enough for two to thrust out their heads together, they draw within after the serving of a meal and fight furiously, while a waiting third may slip up and gain the coveted hole. But all their fighting days seem to be confined to a few in the fourth week of their lives.

* * * In very early life a meal is served to baby Flicker with many insertions of the parent’s bill, as many as thirty-four have been counted, but from eight to twenty are the ordinary number, decreasing to three or four before the young leave the nest. A record made during a continuous watch of six hours and thirty-two minutes shows that each parent fed five times; that the father delivered his supply with eighty-two insertions of the bill, while the mother used but forty-one. Probably the father brought more food since on every count he proved himself the more devoted parent. In grasping the bill the point of the youngster’s bill is at right angles with that of the parent’s, thus the opening between the food-bearing mandibles is covered after the young have attained a few days of age, and any over-dropping of food is prevented. This accident frequently happens in the early days of the nest, then the mussed up ants that fall are carefully picked up by the frugal parent when the feeding is over. * * *

Experiments show that to a nestling weighing 743 grains was given a breakfast that weighed 76 grains, to one weighing 1,430 grains a dinner of 118 grains, and to another that tipped the scales at 1,530 grains a supper of 103 grains. Probably the weight of the average load is not far from one hundred grains. * * *