22 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 
it makes short excursions after fresh hunting grounds or in -pursuit of some 
flying insect, but its favourite food consists of ants and their cocoons in search 
of which it digs into the hills formed by these insects. 
The Green Woodpecker usually excavates a hole for itsélf in the partly 
decayed trunk of some soft-wooded tree, showing no special preference for any 
particular species, though in Kent I have chiefly noticed it entering holes in 
orchard-trees; the entrance to the hole is horizontal until the rotten core is 
reached when it descends abruptly, and the five to six glossy white eggs are 
deposited upon the sprinkling of chips or rotten dust at the bottom of the cavity. 
I received my eggs from a keeper in the New Forest, never having personally 
taken them; they were forwarded to me unblown, and I found the shell very hard 
to drill. One of these is figured on Plate VIII., fig. 266. 
The call of the bird has been variously described but so far as I can 
remember, it is best represented by the rustic name of ‘“‘ Yaffle,” which has 
been given to this species. The rapid tapping frequently heard is now recognised 
as a signal to its mate and not merely (as formerly supposed) to disturb its 
hidden prey. ‘ 
In addition to the imsect-food already mentioned as forming its principal 
diet, the Green Woodpecker was declared by Bechstein to eat nuts, and Mr. T. 
E. Gunn (as related by Stevenson) discovered fragments of acorns in the stomach 
of one of these birds: Naumann also mentions that it eats acorns. 
The end of April and beginning of May are stated to be the season of 
nidification; but my eggs were taken from the nest in Jute, 1878, and I have 
certainly seen the birds examining a hole in a tree about the middle of the 
latter month: of course a first laying of eggs may have been destroyed, or a 
first nest seized by Starlings, as sometimes happens. As a rule this bird 
excavates a fresh hole every year, but not invariably, and doubtless, if ready 
to lay, the female would perforce accept the first hole suitable for her purpose. 
In winter this species often wanders far in search of food, and not rarely it 
falls into the hands of the bird-catchers, who if unable to find a purchaser of it 
living, doubtless often sell it, for stuffing, to publicans and others who like to 
have a case of bright-coloured birds to show to their friends. In August, 1895, 
a bird-catcher brought me a female of this species, which he assured me was a 
rare foreign bird, and when I told him that it was a Green Woodpecker he 
seemed only half convinced. He said if I did not want it he should kill and 
stuff it, as he did not know anyone else likely to buy it as a cage-bird. Of 
course I bought it and put it into a spacious cage, up the back of which I 
placed a large piece of loose bark, behind which the bird retired, just showing its 
