96 PICUS VIIUDIS. 



just sufficient to admit the body, but at the lower part enlarged. 

 Both the male and the female work alternately, and when the 

 cavity is completed, it receives no lining of straws or feathers, 

 but the eggs, to the number of five, of an elliptical form, white, 

 an inch and a quarter in length, are deposited on the bare wood. 

 The young often leave the nest before they are able to fly, 

 creep along the stem and branches, and return to it at night. 



In winter it is often seen in the neighbourhood of houses, 

 and betakes itself for repose to hollow trees. At all seasons it 

 is shy, although when busily engaged in searching for food, it 

 will allow a person to approach very near it. In autumn, 

 when it is fat, it is frequently eaten, and is sometimes seen in 

 the markets, although usually its flesh is rank and tough. 



Mr Harley, of Leicester, has favoured me with the follow- 

 ing characteristic account of its habits, as observed in his neigh- 

 bourhood. " The ornithologist desirous of becoming acquainted 

 with the habits of the Green Woodpecker in this part of the 

 country, must repair to the hedge-row tree, the elm, the de- 

 cayed ash, and the ranpikes of the solitary forest oak, and not 

 to the verdant shades of Grooby or Newtown, or the more im- 

 penetrable woods of Sheet Hedges. It sometimes approaches 

 the habitations of man, and I have seen it within a few yards 

 of the buildings of our populous town. On the 16th of April 

 1834, at five o'clock in the morning, I had a good view of a 

 pair of these birds, as they were at M'ork on an ant-hillock, at 

 the foot of some lofty elms. I remarked the loud sonorous 

 note of the male to proceed from him equally when on the 

 hillock as when on the bole of the tree, to which both he and 

 his partner always resorted when the least danger was appa- 

 rent, or any unusual noise was made. 



" The elm is the most common tree within a few miles round 

 Leicester, and on its bark the Green Woodpecker appears 

 happy and at home. Its flight is undulating, but the last un- 

 dulation, before the bird alights on the bole of the tree, is 

 much longer than the first. I have never seen it descend the 

 tree after the manner of the Nuthatch, nor have I reason to 

 think that it ever does so. Some authors, in their history of 

 this bird, speak of its carrying away the chips from the foot of 



