THE NEW FOREST. 83 



after fishing for twenty minutes without success, at length hauled forth the 

 piebald form of a Greater Spotted Woodpecker. The tree was one which 

 swarmed with ants, and presumably the prospective convenience of possessing 

 a larder ready at hand had proved too much for the moral scruples of 

 Dendrocopus major, and in the subsequent struggle for possession the weaker 

 competitors had gone to the wall. The following year the disputed property 

 was again annexed by the Nuthatches, and there was also a second nest 



CRAB WOOD. 



within one hundred yards of the old one, this latter being, like the first, in 

 an oak tree infested with ants. The Lesser Spotted Woodpecker I have 

 never seen near Lyndhurst, but it is an easy bird to overlook, and the locality 

 is well adapted to its requirements. 



But perhaps, after all, the bird that one associates most closely with 

 Lyndhurst is the Wood-Wren. Anywhere round Ashurst Lodge they may 

 be met with, though the exact place seems to vary with each year. I had 

 never seen a Wood-Wren till I met them here, and had often wondered 



G 2 



