THE WOODPECKERS 



1743 



the adjacent ranges, reoccurring in the Wynaad and extending down the high 

 mountains of the Burmese Provinces, the Malayan Peninsula, Sumatra, and North- 

 ern Borneo, these piculets nest in holes which they excavate themselves, laying as 

 many as seven eggs, as Mr. Thomson says that he has seen as many young ones 

 constituting a family and flying about with their parents. Mr. Gammie has found 

 the species nesting in Sikkim, in decaying stumps of small trees, about three feet 

 from the ground, in holes bored by the birds themselves, the entrance being only 

 about an inch in diameter. The hole was three and one-half inches deep, and little 

 more than an inch wide all the way, and, as with other woodpeckers, there were no 

 nesting materials. 



BRAZILIAN PICUI.ET. 



R f p* 1 ru ^ ous piculets (Sasza) differ from the preceding genus in hav- 



ing the sides of the face around the eye bare. They have only three 

 toes, the first being absent. In the Himalayan species (S. ochracea) the general 

 color is rufous olive above, rufous below; the forehead is golden yellow in the male, 

 rufous in the female, with a white stripe above the eye. In Tenasserim Mr. Davison 

 found it frequenting moderately open country, especially where bamboos flourished. 

 "It keeps to the undergrowth and secondary scrub and bamboo jungle, working 

 about the fallen logs. It is wonderful what a loud sound one of these little fellows 

 can produce when tapping a bamboo. I have more than once thought that it must 

 have been some large woodpecker, and was astonished when I could not see it, and 

 when at last I did discover the tiny object I felt quite as much surprised at the 



