UNSATISFIED LONGINGS 237 



As the ants are too small for it to hold in its bill, 

 it is obliged to swallow them, and this has led to its 

 feeding the young by a process of regurgitation, as 

 does the nightjar, owing, I believe, to a similar 

 reason. In the breeding season the males become 

 pugnacious, and fight in a specialised manner, also 

 on the ground, and here, too, the marriage rite is 

 consummated. From this to laying the eggs in a 

 hole, or depression, of the earth — a rabbit-burrow, 

 for instance, as does the stockdove, though still 

 sometimes building in trees, as it, no doubt, once 

 always did — does not appear to me to be a very far 

 cry, and I believe that, if trees were to disappear 

 in our island, the green woodpecker, instead of dis- 

 appearing with them, would stay on, as a ground- 

 living species, entirely. On one point of the bird's 

 habits I have not yet satisfied myself. Does it pass 

 the entire night, clinging, perpendicularly, to the 

 trunk of a tree— sleeping like this ? From what I 

 have seen, I believe it does, and this, sometimes, 

 without the support of its tail. But I am not 

 sure, and should like to make sure. How I should 

 love to watch a pair of green woodpeckers, settled, 

 for the night, on their two trees — as I have seen 

 them resting — till darkness made it no longer 

 possible to do so, and then to creep silently away, 

 and come as silently again, before daylight, on the 

 following morning ! How sweet to steal, thus 

 innocently, upon their " secure hour " : to see 

 them commence the day : to watch their first 

 movements : to hear their first cries to each other : 

 to sit and see the darkness slowly leave them, till 

 a grey something grew into a bird, and then 



