PICIN.E. GECINUS. 221 



similar to those of the last species. It usually prefers the 

 higher branches of trees, although it by no means confines 

 itself to them, and is so intent on searching for its food that 

 it pays little attention to a person coming to watch or shoot 

 it. It produces an extraordinarily loud, rapid, vibratory noise, 

 somewhat resembling that made by the boring of a large auger 

 in hard wood, but its ordinary voice is a feeble squeak, seve- 

 ral times repeated. The eggs, five in number, and white, are 

 laid in the bottom of a hole formed in decayed wood. 



Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. Hickwall. Crank-bird. 

 Pump-borer. 



Picus minor, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. 176. Picus minor, Temm. 

 Man. d'Ornith. i. 399. Picus striolatus, Striated Woodpecker, 

 MacGillivray, Brit. Birds, iii. 86. 



GENUS LXXIV. GECINUS. GREEN- WOOD- 

 PECKER. 



The common Green- Woodpecker and a few nearly allied 

 species may be separated from the rest to constitute a genus, 

 to which Boie has given the name of Gecinus. This genus 

 makes some approximation to Colaptes, or that of the Golden- 

 winged Woodpeckers of America, and is remarkable espe- 

 cially for having the two glosso-laryngeal muscles twisted 

 round the trachea, which I have not found to be the case in 

 any of the other fifteen or twenty species which I have dis- 

 sected, with the exception of Colaptes auratus. 



Bill rather long, somewhat slender, angular, straight, 

 tapering, laterally bevelled at the tip, so as to present an 

 edged, abrupt, wedgelike termination ; upper mandible with 

 the dorsal line slightly convex, the ridge sharp, the sides 

 with a longitudinal elevated line close upon the ridge, the 

 tip slender, and slightly truncate. Mouth narrow ; tongue 

 vermiform, terminated by a narrow, flat, horny point, fringed 

 with reversed bristles ; the other characters, as in Picus. 



144. GECINUS VIRIDIS. CRIMSON-HEADED GREEN-WOOD- 

 PECKER. 



Male with the upper parts yellowish-green, the rump green- 

 ish-yellow ; the upper part of the head and hind neck crimson, 

 the loral and orbital spaces, and a mystachial band, black, the 

 latter with a crimson patch ; the lower parts pale greenish- 



