io ANIMAL ARTISANS 



They also feed freely upon insects on the ground, 

 especially upon ants and their eggs, for which they 

 tear the ant-hills to pieces with their beaks, using these 

 as spades or pickaxes quite as readily as they adapt 

 them on the trunks of trees to the work of the auger 

 and awl. 



When seen running up the side of a tree, the great 

 spotted woodpecker is perhaps the most striking of all 

 our wood-haunting birds. The black-and-white of 

 its plumage is set off by the brilliant crimson crest. 

 Though credited with being a fairly common bird, it 

 is less often seen than any of the larger species haunt- 

 ing our woods. There seems to be no reason why it 

 should not be as common as the green woodpecker, 

 which has very much increased since it gained the 

 general protection now granted to it. But in the 

 course of a life spent largely in observing birds the 

 present writer has only seen the great spotted wood- 

 pecker on five occasions. On two of these the 

 nest was found, and one was in Richmond Park. 

 The most carefully excavated nest, or rather hole, 

 was made in a rotten willow-tree, some twelve feet 

 from the ground. Instead of carrying away the 

 chips, the bird had left them all to lie below the 

 tree, where their fresh appearance at once attracted 

 attention. Precisely the same negligence marked the 

 beginning of a nesting-hole close by. The fond- 

 ness of these birds for fruit leads them to raid the 

 orchards of small, black, and very sweet cherries, 

 called in Devonshire " mazzards." In the same 

 county, on the sea-coast, some distance from any 



