I have seen perhaps a thousand holes in which this woodpecker had bred or was breeding, and _every one_ was excavated in a _living_ pine tree, ranging from eighteen to one hundred feet above the ground. This bird never lays its eggs until the pine gum pours freely from beneath and around the hole, and in order to accelerate the flow the birds puncture the bark to the “skin” of the tree thereby causing the gum to exude freely. This species, unlike the Pileated Woodpecker, returns to the same hole year after year until it can no longer make the gum exude. But like the Pileated Woodpecker, it is much attached to the tree in which it has first made its nest, and as long as it can find a suitable spot it will continue to excavate new holes until the tree is _killed_ by this process of boring. I have frequently counted as many as four holes in one tree, and in two instances I have seen as many as eight. These birds seem to know by instinct that the center of the tree is rotten, or what lumber men call “black-heart,” and they never make a mistake when selecting a tree! The hole is bored through the solid wood, generally a little upward, and to the center of the tree (which is always rotten). The overwhelming majority of observers who have studied the red-cockaded woodpecker in its normal habitat concur in the opinion that the site of selection for the nest hole is in a living pine that, however, has begun to rot at the core, and this condition of the heart of the tree the birds seem to be able to discern with unfailing accuracy. All the nests I have seen and studied were in living pines, and other ornithologists have made similar observations. T. Gilbert Pearson (1909) says: “So far as I have observed, always excavated in the trunk of a living pine tree. The site chosen varies from twenty-five to fifty feet from the earth.” H. L. Harllee (MS.), of Florence, S. C, writes: “It nests in the same hole each year in close proximity to several pairs, usually from two to four.” The observations of Gilbert R. Rossignol (MS.), writing from Savannah, Ga., agree with the foregoing. He states: “Before the lumberman invaded our great pine forests, the red-cockaded was fairly common, for I have found 10 or 12 pairs nesting in a 50-acre tract, provided, of course, that the pine trees were not too close to one another. These little woodpeckers did not like dark heavily timbered forests. The bird drills a hole in a living pine ranging from 25 to 80 or more feet high, and it is almost impossible to get the eggs without full equipment. It takes a brace and bit to bore holes a little above where you think the bottom of the nest is located, and then sometimes you strike below it, or again right into it on an incomplete set or no eggs at all. The eggs I have found were always more or less sticky with pine gum. This bird will nest in