PICIDE. 249 
the young of this bird taken from the tree before 
they can fly and brought up by hand. 
The Green Woodpecker is a fine handsome bird, 
nearly equalling in brightness of colouring many 
foreign birds. The beak is a dark shining horn- 
colour; irides white; the lower part of the forehead, 
the space from the beak to the eye, and round the 
eye, black; a moustache descends from the base of 
the beak a short way down the sides of the neck,— 
black in the female,—crimson in the male, edged 
with black ; top of the head and nape crimson; back 
and scapulars bright green, tinged with olive; rump 
and tail-coverts bright greenish yellow; both sets of 
wing-coverts olive-green: primary quills dusky, 
barred on the outer web with dull dirty white; 
secondaries and tertials olive-green, tertials rather 
the darkest, and some of them barred on the inner 
web with dull brown; the tail-feathers are very 
strong, stiff and pointed at the ends, dusky barred 
with dull light brown; throat, hinder part of the 
cheeks and the neck, dull dirty white, tinged with 
green; all the rest of the under parts the same, but 
rather darker in colour than the throat. Young 
birds that have recently quitted the nest have the 
crimson colour on the top of the head mixed with 
yellow and greyish black, the feathers passing, by a 
change of colour, from greyish white to yellow, and 
afterwards to crimson. On the moustache of the 
young male the same changes may be observed: on 
