In the greenwood where he lay.”
Ritson’s Edition of Robin Hood, vol. i., p. 115.
“There the Jay and the Throstell
The Mavis menyd in her song,
The Woodwale fard or beryd as a bell
That wode about me rung.”
True Thomas.
Some Woodpeckers seem to make storehouses against the winter, by pecking holes in a tree, and an interesting example of a piece of bark, in which a Red-headed Woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus)[257] had placed a store of acorns, is to be seen in the British Museum.
Another British species, the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (Picus[258] minor), is a bird of different habits, frequenting fruit-gardens in the autumn, and doing very little damage to trees in the nesting season. It generally selects the rotten branch of an old poplar-tree, and hollows out a hole in so perilous a situation that it is difficult to climb to, and, indeed, the whole bough is often brought down by the first gale in the ensuing winter. Here its small wedge-shaped bill speedily makes an excavation, and at some little distance down in the hollow interior it lays its glossy white eggs on the touchwood and decaying wood. Both sexes assist in the preparation of the nest; and in mild winters they sometimes begin with the commencement of the year to look out for their future home. The selection of this appears to be a matter of no small anxiety, for several trees are examined in turn, and often at long distances apart. The birds at the time of incubation keep up a continual signalling one to the other, which is produced by a rapid whining noise caused by tapping on the thinner branches of the dead trees. This call-note, if it may be called such, is generally heard in the early morning, and ceases as soon as the nesting operations have finally commenced. Besides this note, they have also one like the “laugh” of the Green Woodpecker, but, of course, much reduced in accordance with the difference in the size of the two birds. The little Spotted Woodpecker may often be seen hanging on to, and climbing round, the slender twigs of the outer branches of a tree, and looks much like a Creeper or a Nuthatch, which it does not greatly exceed in dimensions.