most, a white patch on the side of the neck, and then unite®
with the glossy blue-black of the nape, hack, rump and upper
tail-coverts'’; the smaller wing-coverts are black ; the larger,
with the scapulars, white ; the wing-quills black, with from
two to five well-defined oblong or subtriangular white spots
on the outer web, and well-defined rounded, marginal white
spots on the inner ; the two middle tail-quills wholly black,
the next pair black with a tip and incomplete subterminal
bar of white, and so in succession, the white increasing in
each pair until its relative proportion is reversed, but the
outer and obsolete pair are wholly black; the chin, middle of
the throat, breast and belly dirty white ; the vent and lower
tail-coverts bright scarlet: legs, toes and claws greenish-grey.
The whole length is nearly nine inches and a h a lf; from
the carpal joint to the tip of the wing about five inches and a
half; but specimens vary somewhat in dimensions.
The adujt female is slightly smaller and has no red on the
head.
The young of the year much resemble the adults, but have
the crown of the head red, extending in the males to the occiput,
but not so far in the females; and some examples have
the hanks, indistinctly streaked. In this stage they have
been confounded by some authors with the Middle Spotted
Woodpecker, Dendrocopus medius, of the Continent.
• The; vignette shews the head of this bird, as seen when
skinned. In this species and the next, the tongue-bones are
not prolonged beyond the middle of the head, as they are in
the Green Woodpecker above described (page 466).
P lC A R ,IJ i. ■ P IC ID J i.
D endrocopus minor (Linnaeus'*).
THE LESSER SPOTTED WOODPECKER.
Picus minor.
T h e L e s s e r S po tt ed W oodpecker resembles the species
last described both in appearance and actions, but it is much
smaller, and being, partly perhaps on this account, easily
overlooked is generally deemed a rarer bird in England. It
often shews a greater partiality than does its congener to tall
trees, especially elms, from the topmost boughs of which, in
some localities, its resonant hammering may be heard at intervals
many times in the course of a spring-morning. This
curious noise, though much louder than that made by the preceding
species, is so very like it, that one cannot say to which
of the two Plot referred in 1677, when promulgating, as he
seems first to have done,t the common but mistaken opinion
* Picus minor, Linnaeus, Syst. Nat. Ed. 12, i. p. 176 (1766).
■)* He writes (Nat. Hist. Oxfordsh. p. 175) of a bird “ somtimes seen, bnt
oftner heard in the Parle at Woodstock, from the noise that it makes, commonly
called the Wood-cracker: Described to me (for I had not the happiness to see