CARPENTER BIRDS n 



woods, a family of lesser spotted woodpeckers invaded 

 a garden, and could scarcely be driven away from the 

 red currants and raspberries. 



While in this country the greater spotted wood- 

 pecker is rarer than he is believed to be, the pretty 

 little lesser spotted species is extremely common. It 

 is so small, and frequents such high trees, that it is 

 not easily seen. But in spring its note, which is 

 made probably by striking the wood, and sounds like 

 a stick drawn sharply along a wooden paling, may 

 often be heard in cities. The bird is quite common 

 in Oxford, and was a regular inhabitant of Kensington 

 Gardens. It is still abundant in Richmond Park, and 

 may be heard in Kew Gardens. The common green 

 woodpecker has been among the birds which have 

 benefited most by the protection of the law, and 

 the sentiment of which the amnesty so proclaimed 

 was only an expression. Formerly it was steadily 

 killed down, partly for the sake of its skin, which 

 when stuffed was a welcome addition to the glass 

 cases containing a jay, a sparrow-hawk, and a bullfinch 

 which decorate cottage parlours, and partly from the 

 persistent tradition that it was an enemy to trees. 

 The belief that the birds bored large holes in sound 

 oaks and elms, and so " bled " them, was widely 

 spread. Consequently the woodman always asked 

 his friend the keeper to shoot the woodpecker. As a 

 matter of fact, in England the woodpecker always 

 chooses a partially decayed tree as a nesting-place ; 

 sound wood is too hard for it to work in. But it is 

 reported that in America the earliest erected telegraph 



