Green Woodpeckers 591 



another much smaller race (C. cafer] is found on the table-lands of Mexico. 

 Another very closely related form of the red-shafted type is the Guadalupe 

 Flicker (C. rufipileus} of Guadalupe Island, Lower California. The Pampas 

 Flicker (C. agricola), of the pampas region from southern Brazil to Argentina 

 and Patagonia, is a large bird, thirteen and a half inches long, with a rather 

 weaker bill, longer legs, and less-stiffened tail-feathers than in the ordinary 

 Flickers. In color it is grayish white above, transversely barred with blackish, 

 the rump white, and the wings white with golden-yellow shafts, while the feathers 

 of the tail are black throughout. It is a common species throughout this region, 

 seeking its food and spending most of its time on the ground, and only occasionally 

 clinging vertically to the trunk of a tree. When perched on trees they usually 

 do so horizontally and crosswise like ordinary birds. For a nesting site they 

 usually select old walls of mud or unbaked brick, banks along streams, or, when 

 these fail, they may resort to the trunk of a tree. The eggs, some four or five 

 in number, are pure white and deposited on slight rubbish at the bottom of the 

 cavity. The note of this species, Mr. Barrows says, " is so loud as to be almost 

 painful close at hand, and easily heard a mile or more away." 



Green Woodpeckers. Passing over a small genus (Hypoxanthus) of three 

 species of Flicker-like birds of gaudy crimson and yellow plumage, which range 

 from Venezuela to Bolivia, we come to the so-called Green Woodpeckers, in which 

 the prevailing color of the plumage is green. They belong to several well- 

 marked genera and are found in both the Old and New Worlds, and quite largely 

 within the tropics. The common Green Woodpecker (Gecinus viridis] of Europe 

 and eastern Asia may be taken as typical of the only genus inhabiting tem- 

 perate regions. This bird is about thirteen inches long, has the upper parts 

 olive-green and the lower parts greenish gray, while the rump is yellow, the face 

 black, and the crown, back of the head, and mustaches crimson; in the female 

 there is less crimson on the head and the mustaches are black, a difference 

 that holds good between the sexes in all the species of the genus. The Green 

 Woodpecker is a bird of great energy, frequenting woods, groves, and orchards, 

 especially where conifers and hardwoods are intermixed, but rather shunning 

 the pure coniferous forests as well as the denser woods. "It is," says Dresser, 

 "active in its movements and most industrious in examining the bark of trees 

 for its food, which consists of insects of various kinds; it will also eat acorns 

 and nuts. Its flight is soft and undulating, but not prolonged." In the woods 

 and parks of England and Wales it is still a not uncommon bird; its energetic 

 manner, bright plumage, and loud notes make it ever an object of interest. It 

 is rather noisy at all seasons, but especially so in spring, its "loud laugh" being 

 likened to the words plui, plui, plui, plui; it has also a softer yuck, yuck. In 

 the time of Chaucer it was known as the Yaffle, and in the southern counties 

 of England this name still clings to it. Its nesting-hole is usually excavated in 

 soft- wooded trees, and " is carried straight to the heart of the tree, then extended 

 downward to the depth of about a foot." The eggs are from about four to 

 seven in number, and the same nest is often used for several years. 



In Portugal and Spain its place is occupied by the closely allied Sharpe's 



