138 The Field Naturalist's Quarterly May 



The Great Black Woodpecker (Picus Martius). 



By Reginald Haines, M.A., M.B.O.U. 



Though the most unlikely birds, such as the Vultures and 

 some purely American species, have been admitted into the 

 British List by our ornithological authorities, these same 

 persons set their faces as flint against the inclusion of the 

 noble Picus Martins, on the following grounds : that this 

 Woodpecker, though a bird of powerful flight, is most un- 

 likely to leave its Continental habitat, and has in fact never 

 been recorded even at Heligoland; that there are no suit- 

 able pinewoods for it in England ; that no specimen now 

 in existence can be proved to have been obtained in this 

 country ; that no mere observation of any naturalist, however 

 competent, can be accepted unless the corpus vile of the bird 

 itself is brought into court. 



Now it would indeed be absurd for me, who am the veriest 

 amateur in the subject and at most only a field naturalist, 

 to set my judgment on any matter purely ornithological 

 against that of the authorities in this present case ranged on 

 the other side. But this is a question not so much of ornith- 

 ology as of evidence, and it seems to me that the evidence 

 that is to hand has been treated in very cavalier fashion by 

 those sceptical ornithologists who will trust no one's ex- 

 perience but their own, and whose pernicious formula, 

 "What's hit is history, what's missed is mystery," has 

 sounded the death-knell of many a rare bird that might have 

 been chronicled and yet allowed to live. 



Starting with a preconceived opinion that a Great Black 

 Woodpecker could not occur in England, they have brought 

 all their ingenuity to bear upon discrediting the instances 

 alleged to have occurred. These are, however, so numerous 

 and varied in character that almost any other bird would 

 have been added with acclamation to the avifauna of these 

 islands on the strength of even half the number. 



It is certainly true that many, if not most, of the cases 

 formerly given of the occurrence of Picus Martius were 



