ORNITHOLOGICAL NOTES FROM NORFOLK. 129 



eventually reared on such soft food as liver (generally chopped 

 up), German-paste, and fruit not too hard, and became very 

 tame, readily coming to the hand which fed it, darting out its 

 long tongue directly anything was presented, as well as drinking 

 with it, and climbing up me as if I was a tree. Its tongue was 

 repeatedly protruded about three inches beyond the tip of the 

 beak, and when it came out it could be seen to vibrate rapidly — 

 so rapidly that at a distance of a few feet the motion was imper- 

 ceptible. At the end of the tongue there is a glutinous secretion, 

 very noticeable whenever my finger was licked by the bird — a secre- 

 tion to which it is said the ants adhere. The tip of the tongue 

 had also three hair-like barbs on either side, projecting backwards, 

 which would no doubt also assist in the capture of these insects. 



At the end of forty days from the date when I opined our Wood- 

 pecker to have been hatched, it was a splendid bird, full-winged 

 and full-grown (the eye and skin round the eye greyish brown), 

 but with an awkward habit of standing with its legs apart, which 

 made us afraid it would break them, as two Greater Spotted 

 Woodpeckers which belonged to a friend had done. As it could 

 now feed itself, it was often put on the grass, but, having made 

 its way to a large oak, it ascended with oblique jerkings, almost 

 beyond the reach of a long ladder ; after this it was again con- 

 demned to a cage, or we should have lost it ; and, I am sorry to 

 say, a Eat eventually killed it. 



The usual height of a Green Woodpecker's hole in Norfolk — 

 taking the average of some hundred — is about twenty feet, and the 



