WOODPECKER 1047 



shy birds, and to observe the habits of the species is not easy. Its 

 ways, however, are well worth watching, since the ease with which 

 it mounts, almost always spirally, the vertical trunks and oblique 

 arms of trees as it searches the interstices of the bark for its food, 

 flying off when it reaches the smaller or upper branches — either to 

 retiu'n to the base of the same tree and renew its course on a fresh 

 line, or to begin upon another tree near by — and the care it shews 

 in its close examination, will repay a patient observer. The nest 

 almost always consists of a hole, chiselled by the bird's strong beak, 

 impelled by very powerful muscles, in the upright trunk or arm of 

 a tree, the opening being quite circular, and continued as a horizontal 

 passage that reaches to the core, whence it is pierced downward for 

 nearly a foot. There a chamber is hollowed out in which the eggs, 

 often to the number of six, white, translucent and glossy, are laid 

 with no bedding but a few chips that may have not been thrown 

 out.^ The young are not only hatched entirely naked, but seem to 

 become fledged without any of the downy growth common to most 

 birds. Their first plumage is dull in colour, and much marked 

 beneath with bars, crescents and arrowheads. 



Of generally similar habits are the two other Woodpeckers which 

 inhabit Britain — the Pied or Greater Spotted, and the Barred or 

 Lesser Spotted Woodpecker — Dendrocojpus major and D. minor — each 

 of great beauty, from the contrasted white, blue-black and scarlet 

 that enter into its plumage. Both of these birds have an extra- 

 ordinary habit of causing by quickly-repeated blows of their beak 

 on a branch, or even on a small bough, a vibrating noise, louder 

 than that of a watchman's rattle, and enough to excite the attention 

 of the most incurious. Though the Pied Woodpecker is a resident 

 in Britain, its numbers receive a considerable accession nearly every 

 autumn. 



The three species just mentioned are the only Woodpeckers 

 that inhabit Britain, though several others are mistakenly recorded 

 as occurring in the country — and especially the Great Black 

 Woodpecker, the Picus martins of Linnaeus, Avhich must be regarded 

 as the type of that genus.^ This fine species considerably exceeds 



^ It often happens that, just as the Woodpecker's labours are over, a pah' of 

 Starlings will take possession of the newly-bored hole, and, by conveying into 

 it some nesting-furniture, render it unfit for the rightful tenants, who thereby 

 suffer ejectment, and have to begin all their trouble again. It has been stated of 

 this and other "Woodpeckers that the chips made in cutting the hole are carefully 

 removed by the birds to guard against their leading to the discovery of the nest. 

 I have had ample opportunity of observing the contrary as regards this species 

 and, to some extent, the Pied Woodpecker next to be mentioned. Indeed there 

 is no surer way of finding a nest of the Green Woodpecker than by looking on the 

 ground in the presumed locality, for the tree which holds the nest is always 

 recognizable by the chips scattered at its foot. 



^ The expression Ficus martius was by old writers used in a very general 



