WOODPECKERS. 553 



observes : " This singular bird presents a remarkable instance of the adaptation of 

 creatures to the localities wherein their lot is cast. Though belonging to the 

 woodpecker family it never pecks wood, but bores its way into the banks of 

 rivers, sides of hills, or the walls of mud-buildings, in search of its prey, and for 

 a home for its young. It also seeks for food on the ground, in the same manner 

 as the golden- winged woodpecker of North America ; its flight also struck me as 

 very similar. It excavates a hole, sometimes several feet in depth, in which to 

 deposit its eggs, which are pure white, and from three to five in number. Families 

 seem to keep in company, until the arrival of the breeding-season separates them. 

 They feed together, and roost together in some deserted hole, while their loud, 

 harsh cries, as they call to each other, may be heard for a considerable distance." 

 In Natal Mr. Thomas Ayres noticed this woodpecker on the Mooi River, creeping 

 with much agility among the crevices and holes in some loose stone walls 

 erected by the Kaffirs as enclosures for their cattle. Some of the birds were 

 climbing up the face of a perpendicular rock, searching for insects exactly in the 

 same manner as other woodpeckers examine a tree. These birds are fond of 

 perching in twos or threes, sometimes in family parties, on a big rock or ant-hill, 

 with the head and neck only visible to the intruder. Colonel Butler says that a 

 nesting-place found by him in August, contained four fresh eggs, and the nest -hole 

 was bored in soft earth on the face of a precipitous rocky bank or cliff overlooking 

 a running stream. The eggs were laid in a depression in the ground, with no 

 attempt at a nest, about a foot and a half from the entrance, the passage inclining 

 slightly upwards. The general impression amongst naturalists, who have seen 

 this woodpecker in a state of nature, is that the bird never perches on trees ; but 

 in the Orange Free State Mr. Symonds says that he saw a number of them 

 sitting on the mimosa trees, chattering and making a great noise. 

 Bright-shafted Peculiar to the New World, these woodpeckers are distributed 



woodpeckers. over nearly the whole of North and South America, with the excep- 

 tion of some of the forest-districts, as in British Guiana, Venezuela, and parts 

 of Amazonia and Ecuador, but representatives of the genus (Colaptes) occur again 

 in Brazil, as well as in Peru, Chili, and Patagonia. The term golden-winged is due 

 to the bright yellow shafts to the quills, the inside of the wing being also bright 

 yellow ; but there are some species to which the name does not strictly apply, such 

 as G Tnexicanus, in which the shafts of the quills and the quill-lining are red 

 instead of yellow. In certain districts in North America where the golden-winged 

 woodpecker (C. auratus) is defined as being chiefly a bird of the Eastern States, 

 and the red-winged species (C. mexicanus), as a bird of the more Western States, 

 there occurs a connecting species (G. ayresi) with an intermediate habitat between 

 the two. It is not yet satisfactorily determined whether this curious form has 

 been produced by the interbreeding of the golden and red-winged species, but the 

 intermediate bird certainly partakes of the characters of both of them. The bill in 

 these woodpeckers is rather more curved than in ordinary woodpeckers, and it is 

 also weaker; while the birds themselves are less decidedly frequenters of trees, 

 being more ground-feeders than the rest of the family. They excavate, however, 

 their own nest - hole like the majority of woodpeckers; and they also perch 

 horizontally on branches like ordinary Passerine birds instead of living to a 



