COUNTRY LIFE
LETTERS I have received in the past week or two convince me that the greater spotted woodpecker commonly deals with almonds by cracking them in a cleft or altole in a tree. One correspondent from Watering- bury tells me that he discovered the birds had made a hole to take the almond, and cracked its shell into two parts, breaking it evenly down the seam. "I found that every nut has a back and a front, a single seam on one side and a double seam on the other," he writes. "1 found that on both edges of the double seam there is a very thin flange, easily breakable, and I noticed that invariably some part of this flange had been broken away, making a minute exposure of the nut itself. I concluded that this was the spot of attack and that, with amazing force and very repeated attack, the shell was prised open and the nut obtained." Another writer tells how he hammered the almonds into a cracked stump and the birds came for them. When the supply ran out, he considerately provided his visitors with brazils. The information adds something to knowledge of a bird that, like the green wood- pecker, is flying more in the sight of man than it used to do.
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