“For its nest it bores out a deep hole in soft-wood trees such as firs and poplars. Male and female work with lusty blows of the beak, taking turns at the hardest part of the task, the piercing of the live wood of the trunk, until the worm-eaten center is reached. Chips, wood-dust, and decayed fragments are dug out with the feet, and at last the hole is deep enough and slanting enough to exclude the light of day. The young ones leave the nest before they can fly, and they may be seen exercising near it, learning to climb, to run around the trunk of their tree, and to cling to it upside down. You will be amused to watch them if you ever have the good fortune to be present at the frolics of a young family of woodpeckers. “The great spotted woodpecker is about as large as a thrush. It has a wide red stripe across the nape of the neck, the upper part of the body is prettily spotted with pure white and deep black, and the under part is white as far as the abdomen, which is red, as is also the rump. The female has no red on the nape of the neck. The food of this bird is the same as the green woodpecker’s. It strikes the tree with quicker, smarter blows, and if disturbed in its work it remains motionless in the shelter of a large branch with its green eyes fixed on the object of its distrust. Its cry is a kind of hoarse, grinding trer-rer-rer-rer. “The variegated woodpecker much resembles the great spotted woodpecker in plumage, but is a little smaller. It is adorned with a red cap which covers the whole of the upper part and the back of the head, while the great spotted woodpecker has only a stripe of this color on the nape of the neck. Both these birds are found in the large wooded districts of France, and they live on the same diet,—insects, wood-boring larvæ, and ants. Also, because of their velvet costume of black and white and their scarlet cap, they are both to be ranked among the prettiest birds we have. “Let us add to them the little spotted woodpecker. It is smaller than a sparrow, and its dress is that of the great spotted woodpecker. This bird is found almost exclusively in the fir forests of the East and of the Pyrenees.