GREATER SPOTTED WOODPECKEK. 471 



numerous, while there is even greater difficulty than with 

 the former in defining its topographical distribution, and an 

 absolute impossibility of accounting for the same. It seems 

 seldom, if ever, to inhabit precisely the same spots as the 

 Green Woodpecker, yet its haunts are very varied in cha- 

 racter — large oak-woods, hedgerows where ashes form the 

 prevalent timber, holts or small plantations of poplars and 

 alders, and the lines of pollard-willows that skirt so many 

 rivers. But at times stray birds appear, and occasionally 

 stop for a while, in wooded districts of almost any sort. In 

 many of its habits — its solitary and mistrustful disposition, 

 its mode of flight and of climbing — it closely resembles its 

 larger relative ; but it usually affects trees of smaller 

 growth, and more frequently alights and seeks its food 

 on the upper branches than on the trunk, and, indeed, 

 would seem sometimes to sit crossways on a bough after 

 the usual fashion of birds. It is rarely seen on the ground, 

 for it does not make ants its prey ; but, shy as it is, will 

 readily enter gardens and orchards in quest of cherries, 

 plums and other fruit, being a somewhat general feeder. 

 Yet insects unquestionably form its chief sustenance, except 

 during the season that it can get nuts, acorns, perhaps 

 beechmast, the seeds of firs and berries of the mountain-ash. 

 Like the preceding, this bird has several names in English. 

 Setting aside those by which it is well known in books, it is 

 very generally called the Pied Woodpecker, and more locally 

 the French Pie, Wood-Pie, Spickel (possibly a diminutive of 

 Speight) as well as Hickwall and Witwall, which it has in 

 common with the other British Woodpeckers. 



Confining itself almost entirely to the higher branches of 

 trees, and having no cry but an occasional quet, qnet, or 

 gick, gick with, at intervals, a low tra, tra, tra, tra, this 

 bird frequently escapes observation. Yet in spring, and 

 sometimes at other seasons, it has the habit of producing an 

 outburst of noise that is far-reaching and attractive of the most 

 incurious attention. This is commonly thought to be made 

 by the bird putting the point of its bill into a crack in the 

 branch of a tree — an erroneous belief of which more will be 



VOL. II. 3 P 



