PICA RIM. 



LESSER SPOTTED' WOODPECKER. 



477 



P1C1DJF,. 



DENDROCOPUS MINOR (Linnaeus*). 

 THE LESSER SPOTTED WOODPECKER. 



Picus minor. 



THE LESSER SPOTTED WOODPECKER resembles the species 

 last described both in appearance and actions, -but it is much 

 smaller, and being, partly perhaps on this account, easily 

 overlooked is generally deemed a rarer bird in England. It 

 often shews a greater partiality than does its congener to tall 

 trees, especially elms, from the topmost boughs of which, in 

 some localities, its resonant hammering may be heard at in- 

 tervals many times in the course of a spring-morning. This 

 curious noise, though much louder than that made by the pre- 

 ceding species, is so very like it, that one cannot say to which 

 of the two Plot referred in 1677, when promulgating, as he 

 seems first to have done,t the common but mistaken opinion 



* Picus minor, Linnaeus, Syst. Nat. Ed. 12, i. p. 176 (1766). 



f He writes (Nat. Hist. Oxfordsh. p. 175) of a bird " somtimes seen, but 

 oftner heard in the Park at Woodstock, from the noise that it makes, commonly 

 called the Wood-cracker : Described to me (for I had not the happiness to see 



