12 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



poles were often damaged by woodpeckers which it 

 was supposed mistook the humming of the wires for 

 the voices of insects concealed in the poles. The 

 green woodpecker, like those other tree-climbers, 

 the nuthatch, the wryneck, and the creeper, is gener- 

 ally so absorbed in the business of holding on and 

 hammering or prospecting that he is easily watched 

 from a short distance. He does not show the gaiety 

 and abandon of the nuthatch, nor is he so intensely 

 energetic as the latter. A nuthatch smashing a nut 

 seems as if he worked like the hammer of a self- 

 cocking gun. But the woodpecker travels fast up the 

 trunk, and scales off bits of bark with a sideways 

 blow wherever he sees a likely lair for grubs. Having 

 finished one tree, he flies off, and alights on another 

 about half-way up the trunk. He can move down- 

 wards, but does this by dropping backwards, instead 

 of turning round and running head downwards like 

 a nuthatch. When at work on the ground, the 

 woodpecker's method of feeding can be seen. On the 

 summit of Sinodun Hill, above Dorchester, is a clump 

 of trees much affected by woodpeckers; while the 

 steep turf banks of the ancient Celtic ramparts of the 

 prehistoric fortress which surround it, as well as the 

 sides of the ditch, are full of ant-hills. As the scene 

 lies far away from men and their work, the wood- 

 peckers have the place all to themselves. Some years 

 ago, on a sunny day in August, a whole brood, all 

 fully fledged, with the old birds, were enjoying them- 

 selves in digging up the ant-hills. The writer first 

 mistook them for a brood of partridges, both from 



