HABIT OF GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER. 87 
time, during which I was in doubt, I made it out to consist of 
minute fragments either of fir-cone or fir-wood, but, taking 
everything into consideration, I have no doubt the former. It 
was difficult, at first, to be sure, and, as I say, I was in doubt 
for some time. There were great numbers of little flakes, some 
entire, when they were of an oval shape, forming a cavity on one 
side, whilst others seemed to be chips and breakings of these, 
and were of various irregular shapes. The entire ones looked 
something like the shards of beetles, but minute examination 
never bore this out, but showed a woody grain in them. I 
compared the substance of these excrements with some of the 
small flakes and débris of the cones amongst which I had found 
them, and, though the latter showed lighter, the difference was 
no more than might have been accounted for by the one having 
been exposed to the digestive processes and passed through the 
intestines of a bird. I could not find one head, leg, or other 
recognizable portion of any insect. All was the woody material, 
and as the entire excrement was thus composed, and I examined 
half a dozen or so of them, we seem here to have a Woodpecker 
feeding entirely on fir-cones, having thus—for a certain time of 
the year, at least—exchanged an animal for a vegetable diet. 
The question arises whether these woody fragments were in all 
cases the seeds of the fir-cones, or portions of them. This is 
the theory, but I myself suspect that, from the seeds, the bird 
has come to feed upon the actual wood of the cone, and the 
desiccated and even powdered condition in which some of the 
cones, forming part of the large heap, were, goes to support this 
view. 
During the following winter I was in Germany, and from 
towards the end of December, and through the greater part of 
January of the present year, I watched the Greater Spotted 
Woodpecker actually feeding in this manner, but here the cleft 
in which the cones were placed was high up in a small stump- 
like branch, denuded of bark, which rose upright from the centre 
where the trunk bifurcated. The tree, as in all the other in- 
stances, was a Scotch fir. This is just as described by Brehm’s 
father (as quoted in Brehm’s ‘ Thierleben’), who says that he 
only once saw such a hole in the bark of a Scotch fir (Kiefer) 
near to the ground, and adds that it was but little used. In the 
