1 66 Midland Village: Railway and Woodland. 



feeding on the ground, and looking like a gorgeous 

 bird of the tropics. 



Other birds of the Woodpecker kind are not 

 common in our woods. The Greater Spotted 

 Woodpecker has only once fairly shown himself 

 to me ; the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, which I 

 have heard country folk call the French Heckle, 

 seldom catches the eye, 1 though to judge by the 

 number of stuffed specimens which adorn the 

 parlours of inns and farm-houses, it can by no 

 means be very rare. For this name ' heckle,' 

 and all its curious local variants, I may refer 

 the reader to Professor Skeat's most valuable 

 etymological contribution to Newton's Edition of 

 Yarreirs Birds ^ but why, one may ask, should it 

 be called the French Heckle ? A very old game- 

 keeper, who described to me by this name a bird 

 which was certainly the Lesser Spotted Wood- 

 pecker, also used the expression English Heckle 



1 A Woodpecker on a railway bridge is a curiosity. But a 

 Lesser Spotted bird was once seen on the stonework of the 

 bridge which spans the Chipping Norton branch line, by the 

 Rev. S. D. Lockwood, Rector of my parish, who knows the 

 bird well. 



2 Vol. ii. pp. 461-463. Hickwall seems to be the recognized 

 orthography ; but I spell the word as it was pronounced. 



