64 THE BIRDS OF BRECONSHIRE. 
THE GREAT BLACK WOODPECKER, 
Picus martius. 
The refusal on the part of Professor 
Newton and of Messrs. Seebohm and 
Howard Saunders to give this bird a 
place in the list of British Birds, is 
now so well known that it is with the 
greatest hesitation and not with the 
slightest intention of setting up my 
humble opinion against theirs, that I 
now allude to a bird seen by myself and 
one of my sons as it was flying from an 
oak at Dinas, near Brecon, on Whit 
Monday, 1885, and reported by me in 
“The : Zoologist "\\(z885)\\" py. 305 ie 
certainly should not have noticed it but 
for its cry, which was most startling, 
loud, and resonant, and quite unlike 
anything I ever heard before or since, 
although I have been a field naturalist 
for forty years. The. cry was very 
like the cry of the Curlew when 
unexpectedly disturbed, but was louder 
' and more weird-like, and I think I may 
add, almost human in its shrillness. I 
admit that this cry is most difficult to 
describe, but that it was a Woodpecker, 
and a Black one, I have no doubt. And 
