88 HAIRY WOODPECKER. 
have been great, for a Woodpecker to cross the Atlantic, yet 
that having got, on his own shewing, to Siberia, this ‘over- 
land route’ removes the said difficulty at once; and Whitby 
being on our north-east coast, is In favour of the supposition 
that this course may have been followed by the specimen 
presently to be spoken of, as well as by the other two 
previously met with in the same county. 
This Woodpecker is common in North America, where it 
frequents orchards. 
One of these birds, a female, was shot near Whitby, in 
Yorkshire, in the beginning of the year 1849, as recorded in 
the ‘Zoologist,’ pages 2496-2497, by Mr. Edmund Thomas 
Higgins, of York. Another was received from Worcestershire, 
about the year 1846, by W. F. W. Bird, Esq., which there 
seems no reason to doubt was killed in that county. 
The motto of the midshipman on the mast, ‘I aspire,’ is 
in practice adopted by our present subject, as by all the rest 
of its genus; and doubtless it does often ‘swarve the maimast 
tree,’ the very same ‘tall pine’ while growing yet in its native 
forest, which is afterwards to be ‘toss’d on the stormy sea’ 
in some goodly man-of-war or portly merchantman: upwards 
the bird toils in quest of the means to support him in life. 
The Hairy Woodpecker is by no means shy; frequently ap- 
proaching the farm-house and the outskirts of the town, and 
pursuing its search for food in the trees, while people are 
constantly passing immediately below. 
Its flight is described as ‘consisting of alternate risings and 
sinkings.’ 
The food of this species consists of insects and their larve; 
and these it extracts from fissures in the bark, and holes in 
branches of trees. 
The note ‘is strong, shrill, and tremulous; they have also 
a single note or ‘chuck,’ which they often repeat in an eager 
manner as they hop about and dig into the crevices of the 
tree.’ 
Nidification begins in May, when a branch already hollow 
is pitched upon, or a fresh opening is made. ‘In the former 
ease,’ says Wilson, ‘I have known his nest more than five 
feet distant from the mouth of the hole; and, in the latter, 
he digs first horizontally, if im the body of the tree, six or 
eight inches, and then downwards, obtusely, for twice that 
distance; carrying up the chips with his bill, and scraping 
them out with his feet. They also not unfrequently choose 
