Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/128

94 washed up, but this may have been one frightened out to sea. High wind from the E.N.E. on the 30th, and gale on the 31st.

1st.—Greater Spotted Woodpecker at Yarmouth (E. Saunders), after a gale from E. There is no European Woodpecker so migratory as Picus major. Others afterwards in the same neighbourhood, and two sent to Mr. Cole, of Norwich, and one to Mr. Gunn.

2nd.—Quail shot at Palling, by the coast, and another on the 15th, had their crops full of seed, chiefly of wild goosefoot (Chenopodium album), (Bird).

11th.—Woodpecker Notes.—A Great Spotted Woodpecker† (Picus major) has lately, day after day, and generally in the morning, been seen upon the withered brauch of a large stone-pine (Pinus pinea)—always the same branch—hammering at it with might and main. This hard labour has now been going on regularly for a fortnight. Sometimes it hammers at the dead bough, and sometimes at fir-cones placed on the bough, which it may be seen to gather from a couple of adjacent Scotch firs (P. sylvestris); but it is always on this particular bough, which has some mysterious attraction. Having placed the cone in position, it begins near the apex, where the scales have not expanded, and picks as much of it to pieces as is needful in its search for the seeds, which lie between the scales, leaving the hard base untouched. It probably jams the cones into a crack, or it may be into a hole which it has made in the dead branch. Such holes are about the size of a shilling, and are not uncommon; but it never struck me before that they were intentionally made as receptacles. Occasionally this amusing bird will take a cone in its beak, look round to see that the coast is clear, and then, if the observer remains quite motionless, resume its hammering. It never sits crossways, and each hammering only lasts a few seconds, but is very resonant. Probably it extracts the seeds, which are very small, by means of its long tongue—1·5 in. in length—which is furnished with a horny and no doubt glutinous tip; but I suppose it can only get them by this means when the cone is ripe, and the scales expanded. The tongue of a Woodpecker is indeed a singular organ, curiously adapted for its purpose, and is beset at the end with little barbs. When at work on its favourite branch