8 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



between Aberlour and Carron in Strathspey, described to 

 us " a bird about the size of a blackbird which flew across 

 the road near Carron Bridge, and which alighted on the 

 bark of a tree, and began climbing up spirally." She further 

 described it as " spotted with white," and as " having some 

 red about the head," and as having been observed " not 

 more than half the breadth of the road distant." 



And it may be worth recording if only to show that 

 some uncertainty still exists as to whether it is really extinct 

 as a nesting species, that the Rev. W. Forsyth, Manse of 

 Abernethy, wrote to Dr. Gordon of Birnie under date of 8th 

 May 1885, as follows : — 



" Woodpeckers are rare now in this locality. I remember when it 

 was otherwise, and have watched them at work. The last that I 

 saw were killed in the Castle Grant woods some forty years ago. 

 But the Great Spotted Woodpecker is not yet extinct. They have 

 been seen occasionally in this neighbourhood, within the last few 

 years, and they have been known to build on the Nethy in the old 

 fir woods within the last two years. There is little doubt they are 

 to be found there still." 



Further investigation of this, however, has failed to elicit 

 more exact details," 4 to*'date. The specimens referred to as 

 occurring in the woods of Castle Grant are also alluded 

 to both by Dr. Gordon and by Mr. Robt. Gray. 



The most noted haunts of the bird, and localities 

 always quoted by the natives of Strathspey, were Carna- 

 cruinch — once wooded to the summit with old pine — in 

 Rothiemurchus, and the old wood of The Crannich, in Duthil; 

 Castle Grant woods, near Grantown ; Tarnaway on the Find- 

 horn ; and Abernethy generally ; but it must have been 

 widely spread over all the old wooded tracts of Spey and 

 Findhorn, as well as north of the Caledonian Canal. We are 

 not able to trace the complete area of its former distribution 

 in Scotland, but it appears doubtful if it occupied in historic 

 time the forests of Scotland south of " Dee " and " Moray." 



There is a current tradition or belief amongst persons 

 now living in Rothiemurchus and Strathspey, that this dis- 

 appearance of the Woodpecker was sudden ; and some of the 

 older people who recollect the birds will even go so far as 

 to fix the year at 1850 or 1851 ; whilst a few even say 



