1922.] S(vise of SmeJl possessed ht/ Birds. 237 



3. Hooded Crow (Corvus coi'niv). — This Crow is common 

 enough near the coast, always looking for garbage or what 

 he can find. After a day's covert shooting especially he is 

 sure to be on the alert. Again and again will this crafty 

 bird make a meal on some hare or wounded pheasant, which 

 the gamekeeper and his beaters could not discover. However 

 thick, writes a well-known shooter on the Norfolk Broads 

 (James Vincent), the sedge or reeds into which ducks or 

 coots fall, the Hooded Crow will find them, when a retriever 

 is unable to scent anything whatever. 



4. Woodpecker. — The Greater Spotted Woodpecker 

 (Dryobates major) is very t'ond of the caterpillars of the Wood 

 Leopard Moth {Zeuzera a'sculi), which bore tunnels into oak, 

 ash, beech, lime and chestnut. The Woodpecker is therefore 

 doing good by destroying them, but in what way does it 

 discover the larvge if not by scent ? 



The same inference must be drawn from the behaviour of 

 American Woodpeckers, some of which, says a naturalist in 

 that country (Mr. Beal), locate their hidden prey, larvae and 

 grubs, " with great accuracy and often cut small holes 

 directly to the burrows of the grubs " (3). This certainty of 

 discovery would be strange if it were not explainable by 

 scent, which seems to be the right solution, though possibly 

 the borings of the larva3 are at times audible. 



" I have seen," says Mr. F. M. Chapman, " an opening- 

 made by a Pilcated Woodpecker {Phhvotomus jnleatus) in a 

 white pine-tree, twelve inches long, four inches wide and 

 eight inches deep, through perfectly sound wood, to reach 

 the larva3 at work in the heart of the treo'^*. A food-finding 

 faculty of some kind must exist in these AYood peckers, 

 perhaps scent, possibly hearing, but in any case not sight. 



5. Sandpiper. — It is a common practice in Norfolk to 

 "f}c out" a drain, that is, to cleanse a "djke" or pasture 

 water-course, and a very smelly operation it sometimes is. 

 Again and again have I remarked how the attraction of the 

 mud is sure to l)ring sooner or later the Green Sandpiper 



* ' Colour key to North American Birds,' p, 148. 



