GOLDEN-BACKED WOODPECKER _ 159 
trunk. He was bobbing up and down in the little pool, 
just as the orthodox lady bather at Margate does; 
but instead of clinging for dear life to the bathing- 
machine rope the woodpecker held on to the trunk of 
the tree. 
Presently he ran a little way up one limb of the 
trunk, shook himself, and then jumped upon the other 
limb. This was quite a feat, for the bird’s head was 
pointing upwards and his breast was, of course, pressed 
close to the trunk, both before and after the leap, so 
that the bird had to turn a complete semicircle while 
in the air. Then, after another dip or two, the bird ran 
up the trunk, hopped on to a branch, flew off, and was 
soon lost to view amid the foliage of a distant tree. 
The woodpecker is not much of an aeronaut; his 
powers of flight are to some extent sacrificed to his tree- 
climbing propensities. His flight has been well de- 
scribed as “first a flutter, then a dip with closed wings.” 
But this suffices to carry him from tree to tree, and the 
bird seems very proud of being able to fly at all, as he 
nearly always utters his laughing scream while on the 
wing. 
The golden-backed woodpecker lays its eggs in a 
hole in a tree. It may either scoop out the nest itself 
or utilize a natural hollow. The bird has enough in- 
telligence to make use of a ready-made hole, but there 
is a limit to its intelligence. Mr, William Jesse once 
found some eggs laid in the hollow of a decayed branch 
exposed to the sky ; the bird had nevertheless cut out 
a hole on the under-side, although it was quite un- 
necessary! But we must not laugh at the bird for a 
