The Nightjar is about 10 inches in length. It is a peculiar bird. The plumage is fine and soft; in this, as well as in its colour, reminding us of the Owl, with this difference, that the yellow in the colouring of the Owl is not so pronounced and the ashen-grey and washed-out looking brown is therefore more decided. The two middle tail feathers are a beautiful grey with dark dots and intermittent cross-stripes. The head is large, the eyes dark-brown and large, and they have power to see clearly in the twilight. The beak is small, the gape, on the other hand, relatively enormous, forming a yawning abyss when open; the edge of the upper mandible beset with moveable bristles. Legs short and weak. It does not build a nest. It lays two eggs on the bare ground and there hatches them. The eggs are nearly white with dark marble-like veining. [Illustration: USEFUL. THE GREEN WOODPECKER.] THE GREEN WOODPECKER. (_Gecinus viridis._) This Woodpecker is indefatigible in its work of hacking trees and dragging out worms; it flies in a curve from tree to tree, always beginning its climb from the bottom; finds out the weak places in the tree, in which it pecks holes so that it can reach the insects in them with its long tongue, and so furnish itself with a meal. It is equally busy on the ground, with the ant-heaps, which it bores into. Then when the ants collect together it flings out its long sticky tongue; the ants are caught on it, as on a lime twig, and so they find their way in to the stomach of the bird. The Woodpecker carries on this business also in winter, when he breaks through the hard frozen side of the ant-hill, and surprises and decimates the inhabitants while in their winter sleep. It is a noisy bird whose “_klu-klu-klu-klu_” echoes through the wood, breaking in on many a lonely hour for the woodman; a real blessing in the orchard, and a skilful surgeon for invalid trees; on that account it deserves protection and care. In this country it is fairly common. * * * * * This is the largest and best known of our English Woodpeckers, and it occurs in most of our wooded districts south of Derbyshire and Yorkshire. In the northern counties it only breeds occasionally. In Scotland it is little known and from Ireland it is also practically absent. In England, too, it is very local in its occurrences. The song which roused my imagination most in childhood’s days was that one with the refrain about “The woodpecker tapping the hollow beech tree.” And the fact that as I listened to it I could only gaze out of the old-fashioned bow windows of a town house, which looked out over a sloping expanse of smoky chimneys, made the idea of the Woodpecker tapping mysteriously suggestive and attractive. Since then I have heard it in many a country--the green species and its relatives, and the song takes me always back to the old home and the mother’s side by the piano.