FASCICULA 133 



noon in my sister's garden at Jesmond, Newcastle, 

 hammering- at oak-apples. He was "quite tame and very 

 dirty"! A local paper had mentioned one in the Leazes 

 park, at Newcastle, a day or two before ; another note 

 recorded it at Hawick, with the specific addition that 

 "such a bird had not been seen there since 1886." — Note 

 the coincidence of dates. 



During the following- spring (1899) these woodpeckers 

 were noticeably more numerous than usual. I picked one 

 up dead on the river-side at Houxty, April 28th, and two 

 months later, while I was in South Africa, my brothers 

 found a nest with six young in a silver-birch in Houxty 

 wood. It has nested in this neighbourhood almost every 

 year since. Though preferring coniferous woods, this 

 woodpecker always selects for nesting, a deciduous tree — 

 birch, ash, alder, or wych-elm for choice, and always 

 rotten at the core. One tree may be occupied year after 

 year, in which case it becomes completely hollowed-out, 

 and has two or more entrance-holes, each as round as 

 though bored with an augur. Egg's are laid at end of 

 May, and young fledged July 10th. This is a shy bird, 

 impatient of observation, and has a fine wild fluid cry — 

 as far as can be expressed in words, "gee-yeek" — 

 uttered when on flight. Its call-note, while nesting, is a 

 sort of "clack, clack. " 



This spring (1906), a pair of great spotted wood- 

 peckers nested at Nunwick, quite close by the house ; 

 the tree selected being a silver-birch, ancient, and broken 

 off short at about 30 feet from the ground. The nest- 

 hole was bored (after several trial "drifts") at about 

 two-thirds that height. When I saw it, the lawn and 

 shrubs beneath were strewn with chips, and Mr A. M. 

 Allgood gave me the following account: — "The wood- 



