THE WOODPECKER'S CALL.
From a number of districts evidence has reached me of the multiplication of that once rare bird, the lesser-spotted woodpecker ; and as it happens, two friends have this week sent me long accounts of their particular observations. These seem to me to go a long way to prove the fallacy of an age-long
and almost universal belief. One letter comes from Berk- shire, where a very good observer, of a scientific turn, has been astonished at the great distance to which the bird's call could be heard. Exactly the same criticism is expressed with much corroborative detail in a very interesting letter from a French observer in The Field. The point which seems to me crucial is this : the notes made by the lesser spotted, heard at a dis- tance of at least 300 yards, seem to carry further than those of the greater-spotted. Now, the lesser-spotted is a very small bird, not much stouter than a nut-hatch, whose tapping (as opposed to his song) carries only a few yards. It is next- door to impossible that he should make so loud a note by mechanical tapping on hollow wood and excel his greater cousin at the surprising performance. That the famous tap- ping note is much more likely to be a vocal note (aided by the vibrations of the strange tongue possessed by the tribe) seems to be a fair inference, even if we were without direct evidence now supplied by those who have watched the bird produce the note without tapping wood. Personally, I must confess that till the kst week or two I have always entirely rejected the vocal theory, which has long had a few ardent believers.
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