94 CATALOGUE OF THE BIRDS OF SUFFOLK. 



universally distributed throughout the county, but appears 

 to be more common in the Western than in the Eastern 

 division ; my records, at least, of its occurrence are much 

 more numerous from the former. Sir C. Bunbury gives an 

 interesting account of a feat of this bird. "In the middle 

 of January 1861, in very severe weather, a man in the 

 village of Barton who kept bees, found that large holes had 

 been battered in his straw hive, and quantities of his bees 

 killed. He set a steel trap before it, and caught a Green 

 Woodpecker; it was brought to me, . . . . and is now 

 preserved in my house. The schoolmistress and several of the 

 children had seen it at work upon hives in the school-garden, 

 battering them with its beak, and picking out the bees. I 

 saw one of the hives whicli had been thus assailed ; several 

 large holes had been drilled through it by the bird's 

 powerful beak ; some large enough to admit his head, and 

 the appearance of the holes and of the straw round shewed 

 by what forcible and persevering strokes the breach had 

 been effected. I was told that the bird had eaten only the 

 heads of the bees, leaving the bodies, but I suspect some 

 mistake about this ; I see that Bechstein, as quoted in the 

 English Cyclopaedia, says that it will take bees from the 

 hive" (Sir C. Bunbury in litt. Feb. 8, 1876). Mrs. Hockin 

 of Little Falmouth, Cornwall, told me that her bees had been 

 taken by the same bird. The peculiarly coloured eggs, 

 blotched and spotted with reddLh brown and tawny yellow, 

 mentioned by Prof. Newton as taken at Elveden (in Z. 2229, 

 2923, and 230 1 ) are now believed by him and by M r. Hewitson 

 to owe their colour to a vegetable stain (Stev. B. of JV. i. 

 287). 



GREATER SPOTTED WOODPECKER, PlCUS ?)iajbr, L. 



S. and W. Cat. 29. — Spald. List, xxxvi. (Catalogued 

 only). 



East Suffolk. 



1. Yarmouth, rarely met with (Paget, Y. 6) ; a male obtained near 

 that place Nov. 1881 (G. Smith in litt). A pair, both adults, killed at 

 Worlingham in April 1866 ; the female, besides having other variations 



