304 SUMMER. 



much more rare in this country than it really is. It is 

 often not only in the wood, but jarring by its rapid 

 strokes upon the very tree at which one is looking, and 

 yet there is no way of seeing it. Less concealed by its 

 colours than the green one, its rapid movements are a 

 much better concealment, at least from the view of 

 man, as in any way that he can contrive to get round 

 to the other side of a tree, it can be before him. Its 

 range of motions are also greater, for although it bores 

 or quarries always with the head uppermost, and sup- 

 ports itself in the same manner as the other, it can run 

 with ease in any direction. It is, indeed, a more com- 

 plete and constant inhabitant of trees than the other, 

 and is very seldom seen in any other situation. It 

 may eat ants when it finds them on the tree, but it 

 does not waylay them in their paths, or attack their 

 encampments ; neither does it appear to eat nuts or 

 berries, at least, though Temminck says that it does, 

 we have not met with it in the hazle coppices at the 

 season when the green woodpecker is there, though, 

 perhaps, that may have been owing to its being really 

 less abundant, or to its greater skill in hiding. We 

 have seen it only in wild and sequestered places, but it 

 is said to approach the habitations of man in the winter 

 season, and assist in clearing fruit trees of the larvae of 

 insects, and being pretty dexterous in working hyberna- 

 ting ones out of their holes and crannies. 



The blows with which it strikes a tree sound fully as 

 loud as those of the green woodpecker, and as the pair 

 always excavate their nest, and often form two open- 

 ings to it, their boring powers must be considerable. 

 The nest is generally at least twenty feet from the 



