48 
SOME CANADIAN FEATHERED FRIENDS. 
|N the ^summer of 1895 I in British Columbia, near 
Vancouver Island, and it was there that I had the 
opportunity of seeing several interesting birds. The 
first to be mentioned is the great black woodpecker 
{Picus mavHus). It is not very large — in fact no woodpeckers are 
as large as many people imagine them to be ; it measured about 
seventeen inches from the tip of the beak to the end of its tail. 
These measurements were taken from an adult bird which I shot : 
not for sport, mind, but to examine it more closely than otherwise 
was possible. The colour of the great black woodpecker is, as its 
name implies, a beautiful glossy black, the top of its head being 
a brilliant red. The trees which these birds inhabit in British 
Columbia are a species of giant pine, called Douglas fir, which in 
some known cases exceed two hundred feet in height ; also cedars, 
which are common there and grow to a huge height. As you 
are Avalking, perhaps along a road or trail in the heart of the 
virgin forest, with gigantic trees on every side and thick under- 
bush and brush, you are suddenly arrested by a series of sharp 
taps, which sound at first like someone hammering a nail into 
a wooden stake. Tap-a-tap-tap ! and you look up in the direction 
from which you heard the sound. Perhaps it is not far from the 
ground or it may be some way up, but you soon fix your eyes 
on the author of the sound. There he is, hammering aAvay on 
some half-rotten or dead tree as if his whole little life was wrapt 
up in his occupation. Now he gives a few sharp taps, and then 
up he runs perpendicularly a few inches, and then tap, tap again, 
now on one side of the tree, now on the other, always busy, 
always tapping. But see ! he has caught sight of us staring at 
him, so round he pops to the other side — ^just as a squirrel does 
when you scare it — and off he flies to a neighbouring tree, often 
without our notice, to commence operations again or to renew 
them either where he has himself been before, or where some 
other woodpecker has been working. 
A number of rotten stumps without branches, standing stiff 
and gaunt, are literally turned inside out by these busy little 
excavators in their search for food. 1 also saw several species 
of pied woodpeckers, whose habits are very similar to the fore- 
going bird. 
Among many other birds of interest was a kind of pigmy owl, 
a very quaint and amusing little fellow. One day 1 was walking 
along by the side of the road, with a bit of open ground a few 
yards square on one side, surrounded by the bush, when some- 
thing plump and soft brushed past my face, making me jump. 
I threw up my hands and the l)ird settled down on the bit of 
ground and stared at me most solemnly ; it was holding a dead 
mouse firmly in its beak. There it sat and stared at me, and 
there I stood and stared at it. I cautiously advanced a few feet. 
