Hi Rob,

I don't know if this is much help, but I'm guessing the various flicker box
plans may recommend 2-inch boards in an attempt to suggest/imitate the
larger trees flickers are said to prefer (at least 12-inch dbh). Just a
guess, really.

If I were you I'd go ahead and use the 1-inch board if that was the only way
I thought I could mount the box. I appreciate your comments about the box
heaviness!

Perhaps you could use 2-inch board only for the front.

By the way, I've been told one should use wood shavings or chips-not
sawdust-to pack woodpecker boxes (sawdust won't dry out if it gets wet).

Basically, stuff I've read suggests box usage will depend on availability
(or lack thereof) of natural cavities-pretty much as one would suspect.

For what it's worth, some of the info below suggests that facing the box
south might be most attractive for birds in our region. But you read
different things from different people.

Here is some misc. info I stole from various places on the web.

>From the CAVNET site (http://bio.fsu.edu/~jameslab/):

Flicker specialist Dr. Karen Wiebe of University of Saskatchewan
(wiebek at duke.usask.ca) "put up 50 boxes filled with sawdust & woodchips
hoping Northern Flickers
(Colaptes auratus) would use them, but only 1 was used by a flicker in the
last 3 years. Natural cavities are abundant in my area, though. I have
heard that conventional (rectangular) boxes are not very attractive to
woodpeckers, but that success is higher with round boxes made from hollow
logs. Or, boxes with a rounded frontpiece made from a rough slab (with
bark) cut from the side of a tree."

She also said that "flickers (Colaptes auratus) preferred south-facing
cavities and those cavities
were the warmest. However, cavity temperature had no effect on clutch
size, hatching success, or fledging success."

<If I were you, Rob, I wouldn't be discouraged my her lack of success--as
she said, there's lots of natural cavities in her area, and most researchers
seem to agree that availabiility of cavities is a BIG factor in box usage>

Another CAVNET message (I think the emailer was in the SW?) said "most
Northern Flicker and Flammulated Owl cavities faced north and east. These
studies suggest that
other nest-site or microhabitat variables are more important than cavity
orientation in nest-site selection by cavity-nesting birds. Some studies
have found significant directional orientation of cavities and suggest this
may be due to cavity microclimate."

Jakob Dulisse from Pandion Ecological Research Ltd. In B.C. gathered data on
several hundred
nest trees used by 13 species of cavity-nesters in Southeastern British
Columbia.
Dbh info (in cm) on 19 trees used by Northern Flickers:
mean=52.1, median=52.9, stdev=14.7
five smallest nest trees: 20.3, 22.0, 40.0, 40.9, 45.7

>From a website whose URL I forgot:

(Flickers) are considered weak excavators, mainly digging their nests in
dead or decaying trees that are weathered and have weak wood. It is unknown
which of the pair selects the nest site, but the location depends on the
presence of weak wood, not on the presence of a particular tree species. In
addition, flicker nests have been found in poles, fence posts, haystacks,
and ground burrows. The more closely the nest box imitates a "punky" tree,
the more desirable it will appear to Northern Flickers.

The people at the website below have apparently had considerable success
attracting flickers to their boxes. It looked like they're using 2-inch
boards (and also, interestingly, mounting the boxes on poles)

http://www.americanartifacts.com/smma/per/nestcam/flick2.htm

Their email is:

mailto:richard at americanartifacts.com

I'm not much help on the suet feeders-are you using hanging ones, or are
they affixed to something steady? I don't have experience with starlings,
don't know if they'd use a hanging basket.

Just curious-what would happen if you created a suet hole in a hanging log
or in a tree, then were able to cover the hole with very thin wood
(balsa-like thickness and weight)? Would the woodpeckers get at it? Of
course if so they'd expose it for others.

What about encasing the suet in small grid hardware cloth or screen? Do
starlings have small bills?



From: Rob Blomquist <rob.blomquist at verizon.net>
Reply-To: rob.blomquist at verizon.net
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: Nest boxes for Flickers, and homemade suet feeders that block
starlings?
Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 21:15:19 -0800

I am wanting to build some nest boxes for flickers, as at my suburban home,
I
have a number that come to my feeders. The neighborhood is not exactly the
best flicker turf, as another subdivision is coming in every day, and the
little forest patches are growing scarce.

I found a pattern for a box at
http://www.npsc.nbs.gov/resource/tools/ndblinds/nortflic.htm, and I see it
specifies 2x8 for the wood. Is that actually necessary? a 2x8x12' must weigh
40 pounds, and it will need some huge nails to keep it on the tree.
I am thinking of building it out of 1x8, and I am wondeing if it is strong
enough.

And do you all know of any patterns to build homemade suet feeders that keep
starlings out of them? We have a serious starling problem in our backyard if
I use the suet feeders much, and its the suet that really draws the flickers
in.
--

Mountlake Terrace, Washington

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