In spite of the highly developed communal life, Dr. Friedmann notes, there appears to have been no break-down of the family. Whether each male has one or several mates, however, is unknown. In the construction of the apartments there is some evidence that each family builds its own individual nest, while the whole flock cooperates in constructing a roof over the whole. The structures often become so heavy eventually that they crash to the ground and all the work must be done over. Woodpeckers that carve “apartment houses” out of hardwood tree trunks have been observed by Dr. Alexander Wetmore in the dark, rain-drenched forests of the La Hotte mountains in Haiti. On one occasion he was astonished to find a dozen pairs going in and out of nests in a single dead tree trunk standing in an open space, the holes being from three to ten meters from the ground and in some cases less than a meter apart. There was no question that the woodpeckers were colonizing, as the trunk was a veritable apartment house with the birds climbing actively over its surface and flying back and forth to the nearby woodland. In the same mountains Dr. Wetmore found another apartment builder, the palm chit-chat. It is a gregarious species that lives in small bands, each being made up of several pairs having a communal nest as the center of its activities. The largest bands frequenting a single nest do not appear to contain more than 20 birds. The nests are constructed of twigs about the size of a pencil and from ten to 17 inches in length. The bird itself is only seven or eight inches long. Yet it is able to carry these heavy “timbers” 30 or 40 feet from the ground. One of the nests examined was about the size of a bushel basket and evidently was occupied by only a few pairs. There was a roughly defined central tunnel four to five inches in diameter leading through the mass of sticks and opening to the outside at either end. Near each end was a slight accumulation of bark that made a little platform. The “apartments” opened from the tunnel on each side. There was a central chamber, supposedly a community room, about five inches in diameter, its floor carpeted with fine shreds of bark. Each nest was a separate unit, with its own door to the outside. There were, however, roughly defined passages running through the interlacing twigs at the top of the nests that permitted the birds to creep about under cover.