^_ 



DENDROCOPUS MINOR. ISO 



§ G34. Five. — Saivomuotka [Tornea Lappmark ?], 30 May, 

 1854. "Bird shot. J. W/' 



These rare and valuable eggs from a hole in a slender dead birch- 

 stump, in a strip of wood between the river and a marsh. The hole 

 newly worked^ apparently by the bird itself; the entrance about an 

 inch in diameter, perfectly round, and as if made by a centre-bit. 

 Eggs lying on nothing but " saw-dust," i. e. chips or fragments of 

 the wood, which was, of course, soft; cavity perhaps nine inches 

 deep. Elias found it, climbed up and dug a hole with his knife 

 before I came up, in doing which he struck one of the five eggs. 

 I looked at the bird with my glass, and, alas ! satisfied myself (I!) that 

 it was Picus tridactylm ; but the moment I saw the beautiful eggs 

 brought to daylight I suspected an error, and went back to the 

 boat to fetch my gun, and shot the bird. It turned out to be, 

 as I anticipated, P. minor, the pale cap on the head slightly tipped 

 with red. It was this cap which, looking as I did towards the light, 

 had seemed to me to mark the bird as P. tridactylus. Its cry seemed 

 the same. It pecked about the trees near its nest. It flew out of 

 the hole as Elias came up, and probably struck the tree. This was 

 about twelve feet from the ground. Many old holes in the stumps 

 in the neighbourhood. 



§ 635. Four.--Kho\e Nyimakka, 16 June, 1854. "J. W." 



On my way to Nyimakka, after shipwreck in the foss, I heard a 

 Woodpecker crying some distance ofl', as it does when one is near 

 the nest. I found the hole about six feet up in a birch-trunk and 

 sent back Lassi Engelmark to the boat for an axe. Making a hole, 

 I found eggs, and shot the bird, which to my surprise, as upon 

 a former occasion, turned out to be a Lesser Spotted Wood- 

 pecker. One of the eggs was addled, the other three with largish 

 young. 



§ 636. i^/y^.— Enara, North Finland, 14 June, 1855. "J. W." 



I found the nest by the noise of the birds near — '' tic, tic, tic," 

 — and cut down the stump, with the help of two men, plugging up 

 the two holes with moss. There were nine eggs. 



[These eggs vary very much in size ; one of them is in Mr. Shepherd's Collec- 

 tion.] 



