Life histories of North American woodpeckersBent, Arthur Cleveland
Science
Life histories of North American woodpeckers
Bent, Arthur Cleveland
Birds -- North America; Woodpeckers -- North America
Again quoting from the report of Allen and Kellogg (1937):
The site of the Ivorybill’s nest seems to vary
considerably. Audubon states: “The hole is, I believe,
always made in the trunk of a live tree, generally an
ash or a hackberry, and is at a great height.” There
are, however, records of their nesting in live cypress,
partially dead oaks, a dead royal-palm stub, “an old and
nearly rotten white elm stump,” etc., indicating about as
great a variety as shown by the pileated woodpecker. The
lowest authentic nest of which we have found a record,
was that described by Beyer (1900) “about 25 feet up in a
living over-cup oak,” although Scott (1881) mentions what
he considered “an old nest evidently of this species,” in a
palmetto stub only fifteen feet from the ground. The nest
which we discovered in Florida, in 1924, was about thirty
feet up in a live cypress and there were other holes in the
vicinity in similar trees that had apparently been used in
years past. The bark had healed over in some cases and scar
tissue was apparently trying to close the wounds. Of the
four nests examined in Louisiana, three were in oaks and
one in a swamp maple. The maple, seven and a half feet in
circumference (breast high), was partially alive, but the
top where the nest was located, 43 feet from the ground,
was dead and pithy. Of those in oak trees, one was in a
dead pin-oak stub about ten feet in circumference and about
fifty feet high, standing in more or less of a clearing.
The nest was 47 feet 8 inches from the ground. The other
two were not measured accurately but were certainly over
forty feet from the ground. About the middle of May when it
was determined that the first two trees had been deserted,
they were cut down, careful measurements taken, and the
contents of the holes preserved. The hole in the maple was
5 inches in vertical diameter and 4⅛ inches laterally,
and was slightly irregular at the bottom, as shown in the
photographs; that in the oak was more symmetrical with a
similar vertical diameter of 5 inches and a transverse
diameter of 4 inches. The depth of the maple nest from the
top of the entrance hole was 19⅛ inches, of which 3 inches
was filled with chips and “sawdust.” This nest cavity was
8⅛ inches in diameter at the egg level, and the tree itself
18½ inches in diameter at the level of the hole. The nest
cavity in the oak was 20 inches from top to bottom with a
diameter of 8¼ inches at the egg level. The entrance hole
went in 3 inches before it turned abruptly downward; the
tree at this point was 22 inches in diameter. There was a
stub just above the hole in the maple about 4 inches long
representing a branch that had apparently died and been
broken off years before and started to heal over. The oak
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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