76 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



if it worked out at an ant per stab. Or they would 

 perch vertically on the posts of a barbed-wire fence, 

 half of the body above the posts, half below, and sharply 

 silhouetted against the sky. Or they would take short 

 flights within a few inches of the ground, with never 

 a dip. Tip the body up, and there was your thrush. 

 But that green body, that short stiff tail, that black 

 face, scarlet crown and yellow rump, so joyfully con- 

 firming a little theory that the green woodpecker is 

 passing through a transitional stage from a tree to a 

 ground-feeding species, belonged to no thrush. Why 

 should it be more advantageous for the yaffle to become 

 a ground-feeding bird, to be modified structurally no 

 doubt in the far future, 1 in the struggle for existence ? 

 Possibly the answer is that there is less demand for the 

 ants on the ground than the insects he hacks out of the 

 bark of trees, and that competition with other species 

 of his old way of life (barred and greater spotted wood- 

 pecker, oxeye, wryneck, nuthatch, creeper, even cole- 

 tit) is driving him to make a corner in ants on the 

 ground. But I do not feel entirely satisfied with that, 

 for his great bill and long tongue should make him 

 the monarch of the trunk. On the other hand, he has 

 a substantial body to feed. My view is that he has 

 a flair for formic acid. 



These are a selection of my theatre-going experiences 

 in and about the town. Nowhere else in the country 

 (except in sanctuaries) have I found birds so numerous 

 and tame, thanks not so much to favourable natural 

 conditions as the kindly, easy-going temperament of 

 the people of Somerset. It is extraordinary how this 

 attitude of tolerance differs from county to county in 

 England (from Cornwall and Norfolk, for instance). It is 

 by no means an active sympathy we are some way from 

 that, and nobody, of course, dreams of teaching children 

 the meaning and value of the intricate interdependence of 



1 The nearly extinct South American Pampas Woodpecker 

 (Colaptes Agricola), which has become a purely ground- feeding 

 and ground-living bird, has been so modified, its legs, according 

 to Azora (quoted by Hudson) being longer than those of other 

 woodpeckers. 



