140 PICID.E. 



to interest himself in the character and success of this His- 

 tory of our British Birds, might have been carried much 

 farther, but it may perhaps be considered that enough has 

 already been said here upon this subject. 



Though sufficiently common and well known In the wood- 

 ed districts of England and Scotland, as before observed, I 

 can find no record of the occurrence of the Green Wood- 

 pecker in Ireland. It is not a common bird in Holland, 

 though found generally on the European Continent from 

 Scandinavia and Russia to Spain, Provence, and Italy. The 

 editor of the last edition of Pennant's British Zoology, says, 

 that it is also found in the w^ooded districts of Greece, but 

 not on the eastern side of that country, which is bare of trees. 



The adult male has the beak of a dark horn-colour, almost 

 black, the base of the lower mandible only being nearly 

 white ; the feathers over the nostrils, on the lore, and round 

 the eye, black ; the crown of the head and the occiput bright 

 scarlet ; the iridcs white, tinged with pale straw colour ; from 

 the base of the lower mandible a mustache extends back- 

 wards and downwards, formed of black feathers, with a bril- 

 liant scarlet patch along the middle of it ; the neck, back, 

 wings, wing-coverts, and scapulars, dark green, tinged with 

 yellow ; rump and upper tail-coverts sulphur yellow ; wing- 

 primaries greyish black, spotted with white along the whole 

 of the outer web, and on the proximal half of the inner web ; 

 the secondaries and tertials uniformly green on the outer web, 

 greyish black spotted with dull white on the inner web ; tail- 

 feathers long, stiff, and pointed, the middle pair the longest, 

 the others graduated, in colour greyish black, indistinctly 

 barred across with dull greyish white ; the whole of the under 

 surface of the body ash green ; legs, toes, and claws, black. 



The whole length about thirteen inches. From the carpal 

 joint to the end of the wing, six inches and a half: the first 

 quill-feather short, the second shorter than the seventh, the 



