THE WUYNECK. 7o 



Safe as the habitation of the Woodpecker may seem, it is in 

 America exposed to many and strange dangers. One of the 

 perils which environ the burrows of this bird has already been 

 mentioned, but a worse remains to be told. The black snake 

 espies the parent birds as they enter and leave their nest, presses 

 its sombre body against the tree, glides slowly up the trunk, and 

 enters the apartment of the Woodpecker. Eggs or young are 

 equally acceptable to the snake, which, finding itself in a com- 

 fortable and sheltered spot, coUs itself round and abandons itself 

 to repose. " The eager schoolboy," writes Wilson, " after hazard- 

 ing his neck to reach the Woodpecker's hole, at the triumphant 

 moment when he thinks the nestlings his own, and strips his 

 arm, launching it down into the cavity, and grasping what he 

 conceives to be the callow young, starts with horror at the sight 

 of a hideous snake, and almost drops from his giddy pinnacle, 

 retreating down the tree with terror and precipitation. 



" Several adventures of this kind have come to my knowledge, 

 and one of them that was attended with serious consequences, 

 where both snake and boy fell to the ground, and a broken thigh 

 and long confinement cured the adventurer completely of his 

 ambition for robbing woodpeckers' nests." The unlucky bird- 

 nester might have saved himself a fall, had he been anything of a 

 naturalist. The black snake which is mentioned in the anecdote 

 {Cffn/phodon cmistrictor) is as harmless as the common snake of 

 England, though it is a fierce-looking reptile, and very irascible 

 of temper, darting with open month at the hand of any one who 

 annoys it, and making believe to bite. It is sometimes called 

 the racer snake, on account of its swiftness. 



There are many birds which make use of holes in trees for 

 the deposition of their eggs, but which seldom, if ever, excavate 

 the burrow by their own exertions. One of the best known 

 examples of these birds is the Wryneck {Yunx torquilla) or 

 Emmet-eater, a pretty though not a gorgeously-decorated crea- 

 ture. In Wales it is known by the name of Gwas-y-gog, or 

 Cuckoo's knave, because it is said to follow the cuckoo as a 

 servant follows a master. It is a rather elegantly-shaped bird, 

 with plumage beautifully mottled with various shades of brown, 

 and with a kind of low crest on the head, movable at pleasure. 

 This bird selects for its home some hollow in a tree, sometimes 



