A Merry Bird
That merry and pictorial bird, the green woodpecker or yaffle, was accused a few weeks ago of attacking Kentish bee-hives. A little later a Kentish M.P. had the hardihood to demand its free destruction on the ground that it was destroying good timber trees. It happens that recently it was accepted as a beneficial bird by a discerning and learned writer in the official journal of the Ministry of Agriculture. To the enemies of the bird this much must be conceded—that it occasionally drills holes in sound timber—though the standard country view is that only decayed or decaying trees are selected. Now and again by some curious freak it has hammered away destructively at telegraph poles. It is also true that on rare occasions, when food was hard to come by under the snow, it has attacked hives. Such divagations must be confessed; but they are very seldom seen. By far the favourite food is the ant and the deleterious dwellers in the bark of trees; and its holes are punctured in nearly all cases in trunks that have begun to rot. To take this species off the protected list would be retrograde, even economically.
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