58 WILD LIFE IN THE TREE TOPS 



that the bird would return again. Hardly had I done so than she made her 

 appearance with a hazel-nut, to which the green husk was still attached, held 

 in her beak. Settling without hesitation, she hopped up the inclined trunk 

 of the tree, and placing the nut in a little cavity on the upper side of one of 

 the branches, she proceeded by sharp blows of her beak to split it open. 



This she soon succeeded in doing, and having thus made preparation, 

 commenced to remove the contents by rapid and extremely vigorous digs 

 of her beak incidentally wasting a considerable amount in the process. When 

 she had emptied the shell, she threw it overboard with a sideways jerk of her 

 head, and once more flew off, to settle this time in a hazel bush some 30 yards 



away. 



Here a hunt for another nut took place. A hunt which involved some 

 curious contortions ; for she hung upside down from the extreme tips of the 

 leafy twigs, and having found a nut, she set to work to twist it from its cluster 

 with the most energetic movements of her head and neck, and a considerable 

 amount of fluttering. Eventually she succeeded in wrenching it free, and at 

 once returned to place it in the little cavity in the sallow. She seemed, how- 

 ever, to be dissatisfied with the fit, and accordingly picked it out again with 

 the tip of her beak, and hopped some 10 inches further up the stem of the 

 tree to another groove which was fortunately in a much better position from 

 my point of view. In fact I could distinctly see the crimson cap to her head, 

 which proved she was a bird of the year ; the way in which she pressed the 

 nut into position, with its edge towards her ; and the rearrangement of it 

 when it slipped sideways at the first stroke of her bill. 



This incident occurred some years ago, but I have noticed that each year 

 at about the beginning of September, this woodpecker, or another, returns 

 to the same sallow for the purpose of feasting upon the hazels. 



These woodpeckers deal with oak-galls in the same way, placing them in 

 a crevice of the rough bark of some tree, or in some suitable cavity, and splitting 

 them open, so that the larvae within are exposed. 



It is not very generally known, perhaps, that the Greater Spotted Wood- 

 pecker is partial to apple pips, although this fact is not surprising when it is 

 considered that they are known to feed largely, on the continent at least, 

 upon the seeds contained in fir cones. 



Personally I have only once seen one of them at all interested in apples, 

 and on that occasion the bird was flying from an orchard with a rather small 

 apple rather suggesting what, in America, is called a 'toffee apple' 

 impaled on the tip of its beak. 



Although this woodpecker is provided with an extendible tongue, it 

 seems not to make so much use of it as does the Green Woodpecker, which 

 latter bird finds such a contrivance of the greatest possible use in extracting 

 ants from their underground quarters. 



