144? ORNITHOLOGICAL RAMBLES. 



to our bag, we were returning to tlie farm where 

 our horses had been put up in the morning, with 

 a team of tired spaniels lagging at our heels, and 

 had just reached the extremity of a large cover, 

 when my eyes rested on the form of a green wood- 

 pecker, nailed against an old oak tree, among 

 several rows of jays and magpies, which encircled 

 the trunk, while the lifeless forms of sundry 

 stoats and weasels, and here and there the 

 swollen body of a vagabond cat dangled from 

 the boughs around. 



The sight of this beautiful and even useful bird 

 — the woodpecker — condemned along with the 

 ordinary felons of the game calendar, and exhi- 

 bited, in terrorewi, on the same Tyburn-tree, sel- 

 dom fails to excite my indignation, and to elicit 

 somethioof warmer than a blessincr on the head of 

 the executioner; but happening to be, on the 

 present occasion, in a particularly good humour 

 with the keeper, as is apt to be the case when the 

 sport has been good and "the powder straight,'' I 

 quietly expostulated with him, and endeavoured 

 to prove the manifest cruelty of placing the wood- 

 pecker on his black list, by pointing out the really 

 insectivorous habits of the bird. To do him jus- 

 tice, he hstened patiently for a time, until warm- 

 ing with my subject, I endeavoured to inchide 

 jays in my " bill of indemnity." when his patience 



