PICUS MAJOR. 



495 



five eggs till the hole was enlarged by a chisel ; she flew out by 

 another hole in the tree. It makes no nest, but lays from one 

 to two feet clown in a decayed hole, finely smoothed with 

 small pieces of the rotten wood. When disturbed off her nest 

 the hen flies to a tree close by, and keeps "jarring" till her mate 

 comes, just as a missel thrush " churrs" when angry. In 

 England it is called the " woodpie," as it resembles the jaypie. 

 The eggs, five (like the rest of the genus), are pure glossy white. 

 Mr Doubleday of Epping says — " It is a rare bird here. I have 

 only seen three of their nests — all in the horizontal branches or 

 arms of oaks where a smaller branch had been broken off and 

 the part decayed — the place carefully plastered up so as only to 

 leave a hole large enough for the bird to enter. In one where 

 the branch was hollow the nest was three feet from the opening. 

 The eggs, five, were laid on the bare wood, which was decayed 

 and soft." It breeds in the old wood on Tentsmuir, in 

 Waterless, and Kinaldy Woods. In the summers of 1887 and 

 1888 I saw a pair in the old wood on Tentsmuir, but failed to get 

 their nest. In September 1868 five were shot in the district, 

 and stuffed by Mr Walker, keeper of our museum ; one near 

 Crail, two from Kirkmay, one from Cambo, and one from 

 Cameron. They were got that autumn as far north as Orkney. 

 I saw one in the small wood at the Law Mill, 1J mile from 

 here, and as a proof they are not so rare as they seem to be, I 

 saw one on one of the old ash trees in the Madras College area 

 — no doubt a straggler, like the squirrel seen scrambling amongst 

 the iron girders of the Forth Bridge on June 12th, 1.889 — how 

 different from the picture of desolation drawn by Tennyson in his 

 " Aylmer's Field"— 



" Then the great hall was wholly broken clown, 

 And the broad woodland parcel I'd into farms ; 

 And where the two contrived their daughter's good 

 Lies the hawk's cast, the mole has made his run ; 

 The hedgehog underneath the plantain bores ; 

 The rabbit fondles his own harmless face ; 

 The slow worm creeps ; and the thin weasel there 

 Follows the mouse, and all is open field." 



The Cambo gamekeeper told me he had shot them often in his 

 district, and at Prior Moor, three miles from here. In summer 

 he heard one tapping the trees for several days, like striking 

 with a hammer. He followed it up until he saw the bird and 

 shot it. Some authors say the male merely taps for pastime or 

 to call his mate. If so, this is a dangerous habit, as it proves it 

 was a call to his destruction. When seen flitting about the 



