DRUMMING OF WOODPECKERS 13 



female has come flying to him from some other part 

 of the wood, and the two birds have then both together 

 uttered their loud chirping notes and flown away. 



On revisiting the spot a year after I had heard the 

 green woodpecker drumming every day in the oak by 

 the river, I found that he had forsaken it, and that 

 close by, on the other side of the stream, a great 

 spotted woodpecker had selected as his drumming-tree 

 a very big elm growing on the bank. He drummed 

 on a large dead branch about forty feet from the 

 ground, and the sound he made was quite as loud as 

 that of the green bird. It may be that the two big 

 woodpeckers, who play equally well on the same instru- 

 ment, are intolerant of one another's presence, and 

 that in this case the spotted bird had driven the larger 

 yaffle from his territory. 



One of the prettiest spots by the water was that 

 very one where the spotted bird was accustomed to 

 come, and I often went there at noon and sat for an 

 hour on the grassy bank in the shade of the drum- 

 ming-tree. The river was but thirty to forty feet 

 wide at that spot, with masses of water forget-me-not 

 growing on the opposite bank, clearly reflected in the 

 sherry- coloured sunlit current below. The trees were 

 mostly oaks, in the young vivid green of early June 

 foliage. And one day when the sky, seen through 

 that fresh foliage, was without a stain of vapour in 

 its pure azure, when the wood was full of clear sunlight 

 so clear that silken spider webs, thirty or forty feet 



