purpose. The noise may be distinctly heard for half a mile.
This bird will also keep its head in very quick motion, while
moving about the tree for food, jarring the bark, atid shaking
it at the time it is seeking for insects*”
These birds inhabit holes in-trees, and the females exhibit
great attachment to their eggs; Montagu mentions an instance
where “ notwithstanding a chisel and mallet were used,
to enlarge the hole,' the female did not attempt to fly out till
the hand was introduced, when she quitted the tree at another
opening. The eggs were five in number, perfectly
white and glossy, weighing about one dram, or rather more.
These were deposited two feet below the opening, on the
decayed wood, without the smallest appearance of a nest.'”
The eggs are one inch long, and nine lines broad.
The young birds are perfectly fledged and able to shift for
themselves by the middle of July.
I have referred to Kensington , Gardens as a locality in the
vicinity of London rather remarkable for the number of its
insectivorous birds.. The Woodpeckers are frequently to be-
seen and heard there, and I remember, some years ago, see-''
ing a family of thé young of the species now-under consi-.
deration, which had been taken and reared by the keeper at-
thé Bayswater gate,-which were climbing over the inside of
their cage as it hung against a large tree near the lodge. •
This species occurs in all the southern and midlandTcounties
of England, but becomes more rare on proceeding northwards
: it is found in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. Mr.
Selby says, “ In Northumberland, scarcely a year passes
without some of these birds being obtained in the months
of October and November. This induces me to suppose
that they are migratory in some of the more northern parts
of Europe, perhaps in Norway and Sweden. They arrive
about the same time as the Woodcock, and other equatorial
migrants; and generally after stormy weather from the north
or north-east. They moult at a late period-, as several of
thosé which have come into my hands have been in that state
as late as the. 10th of November.” T. C. Hèysham, Esq.
has recorded two instances of this bird being obtained in the
vicinity of Carlisle; where it is considered a rare species. Sir
William Jardine sends me word that it has occurred in Dum-
fries-shire, and is met with occasionally still farther north.
Mr. Selby also' says he has seen it in, Scotland, on the banks
of the river Spey, and amid the wild scenery of the Dee.
Mr. Thompson of Belfast says,* a specimen of Picus
major*, preserved in the Miiseum of the Royal Dublin Sot
ciety, was shot in thé vieinity of that city a few years since ;
and in the manuscript notes of> the late Mr. Templeton, it is
stated that an individual of the same species was sent to him
in August 1802, from the county of Londonderry.
This spëcieS' is - found in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and
Russia, and from thence ^southward over the European Continent
to Italy. * Mr. H. E. Strickland says that it is common
in Smyrna.
; The old’ male hasjhe beak about as long as the head, of a
dark and shining horn colour, with a few greyish hair-like
feathers projecting oyer thé nostrils; forehead, ear-coverts,
and a circle round the eye, dull dirty white ; irides re d ; top
of the head dark bluish black ; occiput bright scarlet; nape
of the neck black,—this colour passing forward, above a white
Spot, : by a narrow stripe, which at the side of the neck dir
vides, one stripe passing forwards to the base of the beak, the
other backwards towards the wings; the back, rump, and tail-
coverts,, black ; the scapulars white, forming an elongated
p a t c h th e smaller and the outef larger wing-coverts black;
the inner larger wing-coverts white, and partly hid by the
scapulars; the quill-feathers black, with from two to five
well-defined, rather elongated white patches on the outer web
Proceedings of the Zool, Soc. for 1835, p. 79.