2986 



Birds. 



his hands in a very recent state, the body being removed, but the 

 flesh still adhering to the wing-bones, leg-bones and head. In a 

 subsequent communication, Mr. Bird identifies the specimen as an 

 individual of the hairy woodpecker (Picus villosus, Zool. 2528), 

 and recites the authors by whom it had previously been noticed as 

 British. I have the pleasure of laying before my readers a hastily 

 drawn but characteristic sketch of the bird, obligingly furnished by 

 Mr. Higgins, and of quoting from Wilson's ' American Ornithology ' 

 a more detached description. 



Hairy Woodpecker (Picus villosus, Linn.). 



" This is another of our resident birds, and, like the yellow-bellied 

 woodpecker, a haunter of orchards and borer of apple trees, an eager 

 hunter of insects, their eggs and larvae in old stumps and old rails, in 

 rotten branches and crevices of the bark ; having all the characters of the 

 woodpecker strongly marked. In the month of May he retires with his 

 mate to the woods, and either seeks out a branch already hollow, or cuts 

 out an opening for himself. In the former case I have known his nest 

 more than five feet distant from the mouth of the hole ; and in the 

 latter he digs first horizontally, if in the body of the tree, six or eight 



