STRUCTURE OF WOODPECKER 405 



the long and flexible neck, enabling the wryneck, for 

 instance the snake-bird, as it is often called to 

 describe, this way and that, a full circle with it. 

 Look at the long and strong and sharp bill ; and, 

 above all, look at the marvellously retractile tongue, 

 which shoots out to more than twice the length of 

 the bill, so that it can reach the deepest recesses 

 in a tree. It has a tip of horn furnished with little 

 bristly feathers pointing backwards and coated with 

 a glutinous secretion, of which, each time that it 

 is drawn back into the mouth, it finds a fresh 

 supply in the glands within, and from which no 

 flying or creeping insect, once touched by it, can 

 escape. 



The green woodpecker is as cheery in his bearing 

 as he is remarkable in his structure and brilliant in 

 his plumage. Few sounds are more joyous than 

 his " laugh" in spring, his yaffala, yaffala, yaffala, 

 which has given him one of his commoner local 

 names, the "yaffle." 



" The skylark in ecstasy sang from a cloud, 

 And chanticleer crow'd, and the yaffle laughed loud." 



Few birds have a greater variety of local and of 

 pet names rain-bird, hew-hole, wood-knacker, 

 wood-spite, wood-pale, whet-isle, hufle, eccle, hecco, 



