Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/336

242 kicks, while the assassin, a stoat, slips like a guilty shadow into the thicket. The victim has a single bite behind the ear. Amongst the hedge-row timber there is here and there a decayed stump at which the woodpeckers have been at work. A Pied Woodpecker, crimson-capped, dips from tree to tree and, alights upon one of these. Ascending by a series of active jerks or upward leaps, he stops to peck with fierce energy at a loose piece of bark to dislodge the hidden grub. A knock upon the next hollow trunk, and a Brown Owl emerges from a hole above our heads and sits with head inclined, wisely observant, upon its cushion of moss and polypody. Nuthatches, creepers and tits are busy turning hibernating spiders out of crevices in the bark. As the nuthatch calls "hwit, hwit, tweet, tweet," it moves its head from side to side with a rapid, twitching movement. Amongst the old timber the Stock Dove is often to be seen, its note a hoarser "coo" than that of the wood-pigeon, and its flight lighter and more nimble.

Now the wood is entered, and here half-a-dozen squirrels are at work, digging for acorns amongst the fallen leaves. Long-tailed pheasants crash heavily up or go footing it away along the dry ditches. Their guardian of the velveteen and gaiters tells us that in outlying covers he still has a few of the old English race, with neck unmarked by the white ring, an inno-