the lowest was located only 58 inches (measured) above ground and the highest, 15 feet (estimated). * * * No nest holes of this woodpecker were found in living conifers. Nor, on the other hand, do the birds seek what is commonly known as rotten wood, that is, wood too soft for the nest cavity to be maintained against the incessant wear involved in the birds’ passage back and forth, incident to the rearing of a brood. The tree chosen must have been dead a sufficient length of time for the pitch to have hardened or to have descended to the base of the tree, and the outer shell of the tree must still be hard and firm, whereas the interior must have been softened to a moderate degree by decay. These conditions are not to be met with in every standing dead stub; hence the choice of a nest site becomes a matter of rather fine discrimination. They found plenty of evidence of this discrimination in the many unfinished nesting holes of varying depths that had been abandoned, often several in the same stub. “Some stubs are literally riddled with holes, these probably recording successive years of occupancy. One stub had at least 5 fully excavated holes besides 11 or more prospects. * * * We were led to conclude from all this that the White-headed Woodpecker is either notional or else very particular, in the selection of its home. Evidence points strongly to the birds excavating and occupying a new cavity each year, although one set of eggs was found in a hole which had been dug in earlier years.” They made a number of careful measurements of four nests, at heights varying from about 5 feet to about 10 feet above ground; the internal dimensions varied somewhat, but the size of the entrance hole was “surprisingly constant”; in one case this hole was a perfect circle, 43 by 43 millimeters, and in another 37 by 37 millimeters; in the other two cases the entrance hole measured 47 millimeters in height and 42 in width; translated into inches this shows a variation in the two dimensions of from 1.45 to 1.85 inches, which does not seem to be “surprisingly constant.” The total depth of the cavity varied from 275 to 400 millimeters, or from about 10 to 15 inches. They say further: “Two of the nest cavities we found were in such unusual sites as to call forth comment. One at Hazel Green was in a slanting upright limb on a prostrate dead black oak trunk lying in a grassy meadow, fully 150 feet from the margin of the forest. The hole was excavated on the lower side of the stub. The other nest was at Tamarack Flat, in the butt end of an old log, lifted above the ground when the tree fell over a granite outcrop. This hole was about 7½ feet above the ground, and as with the other there were piles of chips immediately beneath it.”