THE WOODPECKER. 
131 
The Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is much smaller than the last-named bird. Its 
plumage is black and white, with a dirty-whitish breast and crimson head. As with 
the last-mentioned bird, this patch of colour is wanting in the female. The eggs 
are also five in number, and of the same glossy whiteness. It possesses all the 
habits of its congener, but is much more scarce. The hole in which its young are 
hatched is occasionally excavated by it to suit its requirements. Mr. Roche says 
that these birds are not uncommon in Shropshire; and though usually considered 
very rare, it may well be that their small size causes them to escape observation. 
We have seen a pair of them in early spring busily working upwards from the base 
of a Spanish chestnut-tree near a tolerably frequented footpath in Devonshire. The 
legs are placed very far back, and every now and then these birds, swinging on them 
as on pivots, brought down their pick-axe-like bills with great force on the bark. 
At the same time they worked round the tree, ascending higher and higher till the 
eye lost them among the branches. 
The poets, as might be expected, use the Woodpecker as an adjunct to sylvan 
scenery—as a bright spot in a picture, in short—not finding much that ministers to 
fancy in its lonely and somewhat morose life. Chaucer, with his intense love for 
nature, thus makes it one of the notable birds surrounding the god of love. First 
come the 
“Nightingales, a full grete rout;” 
and then— 
“ He was all with birdis wrien (covered), 
With popingaie, with nightingale, 
With chalaundre and with Wodewale, 
With finche, with larke, and with archangel; 
He seemid as he were an angell 
That down were come fro hevin clere.” 
Romaunt of the Rose. 
These birds are respectively the parrot (or perhaps magpie), nightingale, goldfinch, 
and Woodpecker. The “ archangel ” is the tomtit. 
In a beautiful account of the great pine-forests of Ravenna Shelley employs our 
bird to intensify their silence. 
“ How calm it was! The silence there 
By such a chain was bound 
That even the busy Woodpecker 
Made stiller by her sound 
The inviolable stillness.” 
