336 THE WOODPECKERS 



each seizing the other by the beak, when they pulled, and tugged, 

 and swayed about for some time, occasionally leaping into the 

 air, and sometimes making thrusts at one another with the points of 

 their beaks. But no great damage was done during the encounter. 

 Since these birds apparently pair for life, it would seem that such 

 battles, when they occur, are waged in the defence of territory, and 

 are not necessarily annual occurrences. Mr. Selous specially comments 

 on the fact that this encounter took place on the ground, and he is 

 further inclined to believe that in the matter of pairing the female is 

 the first to make advances towards the male, as happens among some 

 other birds. But this reversal of the usual order of things is generally 

 regarded as occurring only in polyandrous species, like the turuices 

 and tinamous for example, and in such cases the female is further- 

 more more brightly coloured than the male. To these published 

 notes I may add the following communication to me by my friend 

 Mr. W. Eliot Howard in the letter already referred to. He remarks, 

 in regard to the courtship, " all that I have seen in the case of the 

 courtship of the green-woodpecker was on an occasion when a pair 

 settled on a tree trunk near one another, and flirted their tails after 

 the manner of the kingfisher, the tail being raised very considerably 

 during the proceeding, but I don't remember to have seen it spread." 

 While, in regard to their cries, the woodpeckers are not more 

 remarkable than many other birds, they perform a kind of instru- 

 mental music which is peculiar to their race, of which more presently. 

 They have no song, in the usual sense of the term, but the green- 

 woodpecker is a performer of unusual merit among his kind, afford- 

 ing a theme for essayists and poets from time immemorial, while even 

 the less gifted among men have, in one form or another, marked their 

 appreciation of its peculiar strains. The notes in question have been 

 aptly described as forming a peculiarly cheerful, laughing call, which 

 can only feebly be recorded by human speech, and still more feebly 

 in printed words as pleu, pleu, pleu, several times repeated a colour- 

 less rendering, indeed, to all who have heard these wild and joyous 



