The Great Spotted Woodpecker. 



»3 



head over the top like a parson in a liigli pnlpit. I iricd il willi mealworms, 

 egg-food, soaked ant's-cocoons, chopped raw meat and hemp-seed, but it would 

 not eat, and having spoiled my cage by splintering pieces off it and Vjlunting its 

 bill upon the wires, after thirty-six hours I found it dead. I much doubt the 

 possibility of keeping Woodpeckers when captured adult, although, if hand-reared, 

 they make tolerably satisfactory pets. 



Lord Lilford says : — " The young of this .species may be kept alive in 

 confinement, but require great care and attention and a variety of diet : insect 

 food is absolutely essential to their health during their progress towards maturity, 

 and we have found it difficult to make them take to anj- other ; but finely 

 chopped or scraped raw beef with soaked bread, crushed hemp-seed, and filberts 

 will sometimes induce them by degrees to acquire a taste for fruit of various 

 sorts. They become exceedingly tame, and are, from their quaint manners and 

 attitudes, interesting inmates of an aviary." 



One thing I noticed with my bird, it did not sit with comfort across a 

 perch ; and, when in such a position, the tail was ver}- much drooped ; it 

 preferred to spend its time either in clinging to the bark at the back of the 

 cage or to the wire front. 



Swaysland says : — " In confinement the bird should be fed upon scraped beef 

 and egg, and soaked bread and hemp-seed ; it should also be given ants' eggs, 

 mealworms, gentles, beetles, or other insects, either separatel}^ or mixed with its 

 food. If reared from the nest it will become quite tame." He does not, how- 

 ever, state definitely whether, if caught when full-grown, it can be kept at all, 

 but seems to imply that it may be. 



Family— PICID^. Sub/am ilv—P/C/Ny£. 



Great Spotted Woodpecker. 



JDendrocopus major, Lixx. 



B 



REEDS in suitable localities throughout Europe: in Scandinada northward 

 to the Arctic circle, but in Russia up to Archangel and in the Ural 



