358 BRITISH BIRDS. 



that is, by the end of May or early in June. Usually only one brood is 

 reared in the year. 



During winter the Great Spotted Woodpecker wanders far from its 

 summer haunt ; and in its journeys through the woods at this season and 

 in autumn it is, although solitary as far as its own species is concerned, 

 often followed by, or seen in company with, Nuthatches, Creepers, or Tits. 

 Respecting the annual immigration of this bird to our islands, Saxby gives 

 many interesting details of its habits on the dreary, storm-swept, treeless 

 Shetlands. They appear to have closely searched the cliffs for food, and 

 to have preyed upon small beetles which were very abundant there ; they 

 also visited the roofs of houses, dunghills, cornstacks, walls, and even the 

 heather. The conduct of these birds in accommodating themselves to 

 their strange and unusual quarters shows how very easily the habits of a 

 species may be changed and new traits developed. 



The genera] colour of the upper parts of the typical form of the male 

 Great Spotted Woodpecker is glossy black. The forehead is brownish 

 buff; the lores and the ear-coverts are white; the cheeks extending down- 

 wards onto the sides of the neck are black ; a black band extends from the 

 nape to the sides of the neck, separating the white on the lores and ear- 

 coverts from a white patch beyond the latter. The nape is scarlet ; there 

 are five obscure bars across the wings formed by white spots on each web, 

 which become nearly obsolete on the innermost secondaries ; the scapulars 

 are also white ; the four centre tail-feathers are black, and the three outer 

 ones on each side barred with white on the terminal half. The underparts 

 are buffish white, shading into scarlet on the lower belly and under tail- 

 coverts. Bill slaty black; legs, feet, and claws dark brown; irides red. 

 The female differs from the male in having no scarlet on the nape. In 

 young in first plumage * the scarlet on the underparts is much duller ; there 

 is no scarlet on the nape of either sex; but the crown of the male is 

 scarlet from the forehead almost to the nape, whilst on that of the female 

 it does not extend quite so far. Birds of the year, after the completion of 

 the first autumn moult, scarcely differ from adults. 



* The fact that the scarlet on the head of young birds of both sexes is more developed 

 than in the male seems to prove that a not very remote ancestor had a scarlet crown like 

 the Middle Spotted Woodpecker and the White-backed Woodpecker. The scarlet on 

 the nape of the male Great Spotted Woodpecker would therefore seem not to have been 

 acquired by sexual selection, but to be the remnants of its ancestor's scarlet crown, which 

 had been partially removed from the male and entirely so from the female by protective 

 selection a supposition which is strengthened by the fact that the male occasionally 

 assists the female in the duties of incubation. 



