Life histories of North American woodpeckersBent, Arthur Cleveland
Science
Life histories of North American woodpeckers
Bent, Arthur Cleveland
Birds -- North America; Woodpeckers -- North America
On May 10, 1883, while en route from Fort Klamath to
Linkville, Oregon, and only a few miles from the latter
place, just where the pine timber ended and the sagebrush
commenced, I found a male busily at work on a pine stump,
only about 2½ feet high and about 18 inches in diameter,
standing within a few feet of the road, and close to a
charcoal burner’s camp, in quite an open and exposed
situation, nearly all the timber in the vicinity having
been cut down. The stump was solid, full of pitch, and
showed no signs of decay; the entrance hole was about 1½
inches in diameter and 8 inches from the top. The cavity,
when first examined, was only about 2 inches deep, and
on my return, two days later, it had reached a depth of
4 inches: the female was then at work. To make sure of a
full set of eggs, I waited until the 25th. The cavity then
was found to be 18 inches deep, and was gradually enlarged
toward the bottom. The four eggs it contained had been
incubated about four days. The female was on the nest, and
uttered a hissing sound as she left it, and might easily
have been caught, as she remained in the hole until the
stump was struck with a hatchet. The sides of the cavity
were quite smooth, and the eggs were partly embedded in a
slight layer of pine chips. The locality where this nest
was found was near the top of a low divide, not over 4,100
feet in altitude.
Dr. Thomas S. Roberts (1932) calls attention to an interesting feature
in the nesting habits of this woodpecker, as observed in two nestings
that he saw in Minnesota; he says of the two nests:
The nesting-hole was in a live jack-pine on the edge of a
tamarack and spruce swamp, only twenty feet from a traveled
road and close by a log house used as a store. The entrance
faced south and was twelve feet from the ground, at which
point the tree was seven inches in diameter. The outer bark
of the tree had been chipped off for a distance of twelve
to fifteen inches above and below the hole and half-way
around the tree, thus leaving a large, irregular, whitish
area. * * *
Another nest, found the same season, was also in a live
evergreen tree and the outer bark had been similarly
stripped from around the entrance, making a conspicuous,
white patch with the dark nesting-hole in the center. Can
this be a direction mark for the returning bird among the
dark tree trunks around?
As to the height from the ground, P. B. Philipp writes to me that of 26
nesting holes examined by him in New Brunswick two were 15 feet, two 12
feet, three 10 feet, one 8 feet, two 6 feet, two 5 feet, four 4 feet,
six 3 feet, and four only 2 feet above ground.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account