WOODPECKER 1047 
shy birds, and to observe the habits of the species is not easy. Its 
ways, however, are well worth watching, since the ease with which 
it mounts, almost always spirally, the vertical trunks and oblique 
arms of trees as it searches the interstices of the bark for its food, 
flying off when it reaches the smaller or upper branches—either to 
return to the base of the same tree and renew its course on a fresh 
line, or to begin upon another tree near by—and the care it shews 
in its close examination, will repay a patient observer. The nest 
almost always consists of a hole, chiselled by the bird’s strong beak, 
impelled by very powerful muscles, in the upright trunk or arm of 
a tree, the opening being quite circular, and continued as a horizontal 
passage that reaches to the core, whence it is pierced downward for 
nearly a foot. There a chamber is hollowed out in which the eggs, 
often to the number of six, white, translucent and glossy, are laid 
with no bedding but a few chips that may have not been thrown 
out... The young are not only hatched entirely naked, but seem to 
become fledged without any of the downy growth common to most 
birds. Their first plumage is dull in colour, and much marked 
beneath with bars, crescents and arrowheads. 
Of generally similar habits are the two other Woodpeckers which 
inhabit Britain—the Pied or Greater Spotted, and the Barred or 
Lesser Spotted Woodpecker—Dendrocopus major and D. minor—each 
of great beauty, from the contrasted white, blue-black and scarlet 
that enter into its plumage. Both of these birds have an extra- 
ordinary habit of causing by quickly-repeated blows of their beak 
on a branch, or even on a small bough, a vibrating noise, louder 
than that of a watchman’s rattle, and enough to excite the attention 
of the most incurious. ‘Though the Pied Woodpecker is a resident 
in Britain, its numbers receive a considerable accession nearly every 
autumn. 
The three species just mentioned are the only Woodpeckers 
that inhabit Britain, though several others are mistakenly recorded 
as occurring in the country—and especially the Great Black 
Woodpecker, the Picus murtius of Linneeus, which must be regarded 
as the type of that genus.? This fine species considerably exceeds 
1 It often happens that, just as the Woodpecker’s labours are over, a pair of 
STARLINGS will take possession of the newly-bored hole, and, by conveying into 
it some nesting-furniture, render it unfit for the rightful tenants, who thereby 
suffer ejectment, and have to begin all their trouble again. It has been stated of 
this and other Woodpeckers that the chips made in cutting the hole are carefully 
removed by the birds to guard against their leading to the discovery of the nest. 
I have had ample opportunity of observing the contrary as regards this species 
and, to some extent, the Pied Woodpecker next to be mentioned. Indeed there 
is no surer way of finding a nest of the Green Woodpecker than by looking on the 
ground in the presumed locality, for the tree which holds the nest is always 
recognizable by the chips scattered at its foot. 
2 The expression Picus martius was by old writers used in a very general 
