THE GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER. 23 
head over the top like a parson in a high pulpit. I tried it with 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 blunting 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 any 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 very 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 separately 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/E. Subfamily—PICIN-A. 
GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER. 
Dendrocopus major, LINN. 
REEDS in suitable localities throughout Europe: in Scandinavia northward 
to the Arctic circle, but in Russia up to Archangel and in the Ural 
