GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER IN SCOTLAND 15 



become extinct in Speyside seems, almost as certainly, to 

 have been because it was saved just in time by the planting 

 of young trees, affording fresh food and protection. Recent 

 storms— there is abundant evidence to show — had, and still 

 have, direct effect upon our Squirrels, causing them to migrate 

 to warmer or better-wooded areas, where it is possible for 

 them to do so. 



Returning now to our old pine forests, which to a large 

 extent replaced another growth of oak and hazel, we can 

 realise with some degree of accuracy that hazel nuts and 

 acorns became rarer and rarer, and also that insect larvae 

 diminished in the number of species, just as the various 

 species of timber became fewer, and were almost entirely 

 replaced by pine. And we can further realise also, that just 

 as these food-supplies became scarcer and scarcer both for 

 bird and mammal, so would the " struggle for existence " 

 become greater and greater. It must be remembered nearly 

 all the plantations are composed of pine trees only, or of 

 pine and larch. Therefore the food of our Scottish Wood- 

 peckers was thus restricted — or nearly so — to the larvae of 

 insects, and the insects abounding in pine woods, to the exclu- 

 sion of others whose food plants and foliage include many 

 hard woods, as well. 



There are undoubtedly many who ascribe the disappearance 

 of the Woodpecker entirely to the Squirrel's oophilous, 

 carnivorous, and, we may add, insectivorous propensities. So 

 universal is this belief in Strathspey, and elsewhere north of 

 the Great Caledonian Glen, that it cannot be passed over in 

 silence or treated as imaginary. It is beyond denial that the 

 Squirrel does eat eggs, and rob nests, because he has been 

 seen to do so often ; and we know also that he occasionally 

 regales himself upon the larvae of ants — the food of the 

 Woodpecker — whose hills are so abundant in the pine-woods 

 of Spcy. We are afraid there can be no doubt that he 

 occasionally, at all events, regales himself even upon a callow 

 brood of young. In fact, a bad character is now attached 

 to the Squirrel, and the causes of complaint are man}'. 1 1 is 

 misdeeds are in every one's mouth, and his name is a bye- 

 word in Strathspey. Foresters cry him down (and heca- 

 tombs of Squirrels' bones strew the forest in consequence) and 



