THE GREEN WOODPECKER. 



(Picus viridis.) 



Nature has appointed the woodpeckers conservators of the wood of old trees, furnished 

 them admirably for their office, and so formed their habits, that an old tree is an Eden to 

 them, fraught with safety, and redolent of plenty and fatness. 



— Eobert Mudie. 



Not unlike its relatives in our own 

 country, the beautiful Green Woodpecker 

 of foreign lands finds in a tree "a castle, 

 a pasture, a larder, a nursery, an alarm- 

 drum and a lute." It frequents the an- 

 cient forests of Europe, Asia, where it is 

 even found to some extent in the intem- 

 perate climate of Siberia, and in northern 

 Africa. As it is a bird of wide distribu- 

 tion, found in many countries and known 

 to all classes of people, it has been given 

 many common names. Space forbids an 

 enumeration of all of these names, but 

 a few of the more common ones may be 

 mentioned. Some of them, such as Hew- 

 hole, Pick-a-tree, Awl-bird and Nicka- 

 pecker, are eminently suggestive of the 

 birds' habits, and the names High Hoe, 

 Popinjay, Yoppingall and Whittle are 

 not without meaning. 



The Green Woodpecker is quite fre- 

 quently called the Rain-bird, or Rain- 

 fowl, for it is very active and quite 

 noisy as the "drought begins to soften," 

 a short time before a shower. At this 

 time its harsh note, which has been de- 

 scribed as sounding like "glu, glu, glu, 

 gluck," is much more in evidence. It 

 is natural that this bird should be more 

 active as the moisture increases, for in 

 the time of long drought the plant tis- 

 sues are more or less hardened by the 

 evaporation of the liquids confined 

 within them and many insects, espe- 

 cially those that live in woody tis- 

 sues, are less active or may remain 

 quiescent. Happy indeed is the 

 bird when the accumulating moisture 

 awakens the activities of the plant, 

 softens its tissues and thus enables the 



insects to again seek food. "The insects 

 and the worms come out ; the birds feed ; 

 new life returns ; the tuned instrument is 

 soon in use ; the groves are in song the 

 livelong night." There are a number of 

 the insect-eating birds that seem to augur 

 the coming rain by increased activity, es- 

 pecially after a long dry season, and some 

 of these have also* been called rain-birds. 

 In parts of England this Woodpecker 

 is called Yaffle or Yaffil, because to some 

 people its notes sound like a laugh. The 

 poet has referred to this in the following 

 lines : 



The sky-lark in ecstacy sang from a cloud, 

 And chanticleer crow'd and the Yaffil laugh 'd 

 loud. 



Another popular name, but one that is 

 used with less frequency, is Wood-spite. 

 The first word of this name has reference 

 to the green color of the bird, which is 

 similar to the color of the foliage of the 

 woods it frequents. The word spite is 

 probably a modification of the German 

 word specht — a woodpecker. It has also 

 been suggested that this name may have 

 arisen from the vigorous strokes of the 

 bird's bill against the tree appearing like 

 an exhibition of spite. 



Like other members of the woodpecker 

 family, the bird of our illustration only 

 ascends trees by moving obliquely and in 

 a spiral. As it ascends, it carefully ex- 

 amines the bark, tapping and listening as 

 it progresses. On reaching the top of the 

 tree it flies downward to the base of an- 

 other tree to again repeat the process of 

 ascending, tapping and listening. Occa- 

 sionally it is seen in hedges, and in severe 

 weather it may seek its food in the walls 



119 



■HBM 



