Birds of the Caucasus. 23 



Imp. St. Pet. ix. p. 12) as Picus karelini, and afterwards in 

 1878 by Taczanowski (Journ. Orn. p. 349) as Gecinus saun- 

 dersi. I have carefully examined Brandt^s type in the 

 St. Petersburg Museum^ as well as two skins frona Lenkoran 

 in my own collection^ and am unable to detect any character 

 by which to distinguish them from our common Green Wood- 

 pecker. M. Bogdanow and Mr. Hargitt both agree in this 

 opinion. 



Gecinus canus. 



The Grey-headed Green Woodpecker is recorded from the 

 Caucasus both by Menetries and Nordmann ; but Bogdanow 

 did not meet with it. 



PiCUS POELZAMI, Bogd. 



The Great Spotted Woodpecker of the Caucasus is fairly 

 entitled to subspecific distinction. The male does not differ 

 very much from our bird, except that the underparts are 

 darker. In the female, however, this character is still more 

 pronounced, the colour of the underparts being a cinnamon- 

 brown, as near as possible to the colour of dry chocolate, or 

 cafe au lait. So distinct is the bird from the St. Peters- 

 burg form of P. major, that Bogdanow does not apparently 

 suspect their relationship, and points out at some length the 

 differences between his species and P. mandarinus and its allies. 

 He has doubtless been led astray by the article of Sharpe and 

 Dresser in the ' Birds of Europe,^ which, unfortunately, con- 

 founds the Woodpeckers of the P. major group with P. cabanisi 

 and its allies, and ignores entirely the important variations 

 of the former. Sharpe and Dresser having stated that, after 

 an examination of " a very large series of birds from all parts 

 of Europe," they "found little or no variation in examples [of 

 P. major'] from different localities," it was perfectly natural 

 for Bogdanow to conclude, after a comparison of his birds from 

 theCaucasus with those from North Russia, that the former 

 constituted a good and probably distantly related species ; and 

 when he found that Sharpe and Dresser treated P. cabanisi as 

 a " race or subspecies of P. major," it is not surprising that 

 he should have considered the Caucasian bird a near ally 



