314 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



them, as there are numbers of old trees on this estate, where suitable 

 nesting-places would abound. This year (on June 22nd) I saw two, or 

 possibly three, Tree-Sparrows at Ballamoar, Kirk Patrick, feeding in 

 the farmyard with House- Sparrows, Chaffinches, and Yellowhammers. 

 There are many old trees on this estate also. (Since writing the above 

 I have heard from Mr. Ealfe that a Mr. F. W. Leach shot a specimen 

 at Eoad Island, Braddan, on Jan. 5th, 1896, and he has observed the 

 species on other occasions near Douglas.) — Frank S. Graves (Balla- 

 moar, Alderley Edge). 



Breeding Habits of the Pied Woodpecker. — When I was staying 

 with my brother in Northamptonshire in June, we went one evening 

 (23rd) for a stroll in a Fox-cover of mixed timber-trees with a heavy 

 growth of big elder bushes. We had just visited the Badger-earths, 

 and wondered afresh at the "roads" the Badgers had made when 

 dragging herbage, sticks, leaves, &c, into their holes ; and wondered 

 too at the great patches of undergrowth beaten down flat by the 

 Foxes, and at the numerous remains of their good living. The light 

 was failing somewhat under the fir-trees as we walked along one of the 

 rides, and a Fox had just crossed in front of us, when we heard a 

 sound like the cry of a Barred Woodpecker, but, unlike the cry of that 

 bird, the sound was continuous. We soon traced it to a hole in an 

 old elder-bush, which evidently contained a brood of young Wood- 

 peckers. The cries of the young birds were redoubled when I touched 

 the tree, and the young birds, thinking that one of their parents had 

 settled on it, tumbled up to the entrance in a hurry to be fed ; but they 

 dropped back again instantly, only affording me a momentary glimpse 

 of them. And I may add that, although I subsequently tried several 

 times at intervals, I could never get another rise out of them. The 

 trunk of the elder-bush was only about ten inches in diameter, and the 

 hole not more than three feet from the ground. This seems a curious 

 nesting-place for the birds to choose, for there are plenty of good-sized 

 trees in the cover, some of which are quite riddled with holes bored by 

 the Green Woodpeckers, which are always to be heard and seen there. 

 But I do not think that the Pied Woodpecker (Dendrocopus major), to 

 which bird the nest proved to belong, cares to cut out a clean hole 

 entirely for itself (as the Green Woodpecker does) if it can get one 

 partly formed naturally. This particular hole was at a place where a 

 branch had long ago been torn off, and the weather had got in at the 

 wound and rotted the wood for some distance down into the stump of 

 the tree. The birds had merely turned out the rotten wood (which 

 lay at the foot of the tree), worked the sides of the hole out a little, 



