46 C.C. NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



Another common bird in this locality is the green woodpecker. 

 It is a common thing for this bird to allow its holes to be appropriated 

 by starlings, and the lecturer had seen one pair make four holes two 

 feet or more deep and starlings took the first three in possession, yet 

 the woodpecker looks as if he could easily slay a starling with one 

 peck of his beak. The green woodpecker will often cut through 

 three or four inches of green wood in a solid oak, elm or ash, in order 

 to get to the rotten interior. At times they will lay in old holes, and, 

 if not turned out by starlings will come back to the same hole year 

 after year. Lesser and spotted woodpeckers are not so common, and 

 their nests are not so easily found as they often build very high up in 

 a hole in the limb of a large tree. 



Tree creeper's nests are frequently overlooked as they are so 

 hidden and the birds do not show up when disturbed but dodge 

 round tiie tree when you get near. They are very fond of buildmg 

 behind a piece of loose bark on a pollard, a crack in a wall or a 

 crevice in a tree. Thus they differ from tits as they never seem to 

 build in a hole but always in a crevice. 



This is a great country for nuthatches and the difference in the 

 way nuthatches and tree creepers feed is most marked. They both 

 feed on insects which they find in the bark of trees. A tree creeper 

 begins at the bottom and climbs up to the top, feeding as it goes, 

 and when it gets to the top flies down and repeats the performance. 

 But a nuthatch begins at the top and walks down head first and when 

 it gets to the bottom flies up to the top and starts down once more. 

 Nuthatches have a weakness for feeding upside down and if you cut 

 a cocoanut in half and nail a bit up near your window in winter, if 

 there are any nuthatches near they will be sure to come, and you 

 will see them feeding busily head downwards. In most of the large 

 rough-barked trees about Cheltenham you will see hazel-nut shells 

 jammed in crevices of the bark, these have been put there by nut- 

 hatches who jam them in and then split them open, for they feed on 

 nuts as well as insects. 



The lecturer had once seen a pair of these birds building in an 

 old woodpecker's hole, high up in the trunk of a tall tree, and they 

 never stopped, while they were watched, fl)ing up and down from the 

 ground to the hole with dead leaves. Ten days afterwards a second 

 visit proved that a greater spotted woodpecker had turned out the 

 nuthatches for the bird was sitting on five eggs which were all then 

 taken. A third visit after another fourteen days showed that the 



