TRANSACTIONS. THE GREEN WOODPECKER'S LOUSE, NEW TO SUFFOLK. BY
C.
C . TYRRELL
GILES.
A family of Ricus viridis, Linn., has been in my wood at Wimbledon all this s u m m e r ; and they have given me much pleasure to watch while searching for food in the lanes. This, I think, must be Ants of some sort and, perhaps, emerging Daddylonglegs, Tipula oleracea, L. T h e i r call has resounded through the trees. I occasionally see the Great Spotted Woodpecker here, too. Most unfortunately, this week I found one of the young Green Woodpeckers dead in one of my rooms ; it had come down the chimney and was covered with soot. T w o or three times this year tarne Pigeons, and once a Starling, have fallen through in the same manner, which is not very unusual [as did no less than four Corvus monedula, Linn., at Monks' Soham House in 1950, though none this year.—Ed.], But a Green Woodpecker is about the last Bird to which I should have expected such an accident to happen. Düring the whole time that the family has been here I have not seen any of them on or even near the house ; indeed, there is nothing about it to attract such a Bird. T h e poor chimney-victim's weight was five ounces and, when I handled it, I was surprised to find how small a Bird they are. Upon it were a good many Bird-lice, so I am sending you some of them, mixed with the feathers, in a pill-box, hoping they may be of interest to you or some other Member of the Society who is an Hemipterist. [Fully a hundred specimens were contained, and we shall be glad to pass on a series to anyone who writes for them. T h e y are the species pretty well confined to this kind of Bird, Menopon pici, Dermy, doubtless common enough upon it everywhere, but hitherto unrecorded from Suffolk (cf. Trans, supra. ii, 155). We shall be very glad to receive all parasites from Suffolk Birds : our ornithologists have badly neglected this branch of their study, which is most foolishly ignored for no better reason than these Lice being parasitic ! What thousands of human lives would have been sacrificed if the parasitism, thovgh it take a different form, of Mosquitoes had been similarly neglected. Verb. sap. !—Ed.],