18 Forest Birds. 
occasional visitor. Naturally a shy and wary bird 
it is not often seen, but its resonant laughing note 
may always be heard in the wood it frequents. This 
is its only note, and as there is no other British bird 
that makes a sound anything like the Yafiler, as it 
is sometimes called on account of its note, it can 
scarcely be mistaken. 
When walking through a wood one often sees a 
round hole, some two inches in diameter, in a tree 
trunk. Perhaps the tree is a beech or an oak, but at 
all events one may be pretty sure that it is in decay, 
for the Woodpecker has made the hole, and it seldom 
attacks a perfectly sound tree. Its object in making 
these holes is to provide a nesting place. In April 
this bird bores small holes in a number of trees until 
a suitable one is found, when it sets to work in 
earnest, and a cavity is cut, chip by chip, with its 
massive bill, some three or four inches horizontally 
into the trunk, and continuing downwards about 
eighteen inches, then gradually widening, until at the 
bottom it forms a round platform large enough for 
the bird to sit on. So hard are its blows, that the 
bird often chips off a piece of wood several inches in 
length. Moreover, the Green Woodpecker is a 
careful worker; and the chips are not left, as they 
are by other Woodpeckers, in a white staring heap 
at the bottom of the tree, to mark the position of 
