560 PICARIAX BIRDS. 



dipped in those yielding sap. The dipping was done regularly and rather quietly, 

 often two or three times in each hole. The sap glistened on the bill as it was 

 withdrawn, and I could sometimes see the tongue move. The bill was directed 

 towards the lower, inner part of the drill, which, as I found by examination, was 

 cut so as to hold the sap. I looked carefully, again and again, to try and find 

 insects in the sap, but none were there, although numbers crawled upon the bark. 

 Occasionally, with a nervous motion of the head, the birds caught an insect. There 

 was nil doubt as to when they did this, either on the bark or in the air, for in 

 swallowing an insect they always occupied an appreciable time in the proa s& 



Mr. Bolles states that tin- lard- consume the sap in large quantities for its own 

 sake, and not for insect matter which such sap may chance occasionally to contain ; 

 that tin- sap attracts many insects of various species, a few of which form a 

 considerable part of the food of this bird, hut whose capture does not occupy its 

 time to anything like the extent which sap-drinking occupies it: that different 

 families of these woo Ipeckers occupy different " orchards." such families consisting 

 of a male, female, and from one to four or five young birds: that the "orchards'' 

 c insist of several trees usually only a few rods apart ; that the forest-trees attacked 

 by them generally die. possibly in the second or third year of use: and that the 

 total damage done by them is too insignificant to justify their persecution in 

 well-wooded regions. 



Pied The genus D< ndrocopus is not only widely distributed over the 



woodpeckers. „],,i ); . DU t to it belong the best known English species, such as the 

 greater and lesser spotted woodpeckers. There are altogether forty-six species 

 spread over the greater part of Europe and Asia, as well as North America: but 

 the genus is absent from Africa below the Sahara, although represented in Algeria 

 and Morocco, as in Palestine and Syria. A resident species in most parts of the 

 British Islands, a considerable number of immigrants arriving in the autumn, 

 during which season a large number regularly pass over Heligoland, the gi 

 spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopus major), with its conspicuous pied plumage, is a 

 handsome and striking bird. A notable difference exists, however, between the 

 coloration of the two sexes, the males having a red patch at the back of the head, 

 totally wanting in the females, in which the entire head and nape of the neck is 

 black. The young birds, on the other hand, have the crown red, thus possessing 

 a more striking coloration than either of the parents, a feature not often 

 to be seen in birds. So shy is the great spotted woodpecker, that but few people 

 are acquainted with it in a state of nature, and even where the bird is known to 

 occur, it is by no means easy to get a sight of it. Its single note, resembling the 

 knocking of two stones together — a sort of chit — can be often heard, but the 

 bird is not visible, having probably placed the trunk of a big tree between itself 

 and the observer^ after the manner of woodpeckers in general. In the spring 

 it makes a peculiar drumming noise on the smaller branches of the trees or on 

 the trunks of dead trees, and this noise, which appears to be a sort of signal-code 

 between one bird and its mate, can be heard for a considerable distance. The 

 species is found in wooded districts, but generally in park-lands, where hollow 

 trees occur here and there; and in these the great spotted woodpecker bores for its 

 nesting-place. The bird seems to pursue a kind of regular round of trees in search 



