WOODPECKERS. 



565 



mango-branch ants of some species had constructed a huge almost globular nest 

 about thirteen inches long and eleven in diameter, involving, as these nests com- 

 monly do, all the leaves and twigs springing from that part of the branch. The 

 nest is a grey brown mass of a half felt-like half papier-mache- like substance, 

 into which the woodpecker had bored a circular entrance about two inches in 

 diameter, and inside it he had scooped out a circular cavity some five inches in 

 diameter, 

 ivory-tomed With this genus we come to the second division of the more 



Woodpeckers, typical representatives of the family, which may be known as narrow- 

 necked woodpeckers ; the narrowing of the neck by which they are distinguished 

 causing the head to appear disproportionately large. Common to both hemispheres, 

 one genus of the group occurs in Celebes, and is thus the most eastern representative 

 of the entire family. The group likewise includes the largest members of the 

 assemblage, the great grey Malayan woodpecker {Hemilophus pulverulentus) being 

 upwards of 18 inches in length. The ivory-billed woodpecker (Campophilus 

 'principalis), which is the typical representative of the genus under consideration, 

 is now only met with in the coast country of Florida and the Gulf States of North 

 America, although some half century ago it had a much more extended range, 

 reaching to parts of the Southern and Central States. It appears always to have 

 been a very shy bird, so shy, indeed, that Audubon relates that he once found 

 a nearly completed nest, which was deserted by the birds when they perceived 

 that their breeding-home was discovered. 

 Great Black Although the generic term Picus was taken by Linnaeus to 



Woodpecker, include the whole of the members of the family, it is now restricted 

 to the great black woodpecker (P. martins) represented in the Plate at the 

 commencement of our notice of the family. The largest of the European wood- 

 peckers, this species is a member of the narrow-necked group, but the plumage 

 on the neck is denser than in any of its allies, probably on account of its inhabiting 

 a more northern area and higher altitudes than any other member of the section. 

 It has the third toe longer than the fourth, and further has the tarso-metatarsus 

 clothed with feathers, indicating a woodpecker of a cold climate. It is a large 

 species, measuring 17 inches in length, entirely black, with the top of the head and 

 crest crimson in the male, the red in the female being confined to a triangular 

 patch on the occiput. The species inhabits the pine-forests of Europe and Siberia. 

 and occurs in Northern China and the north island of Japan. It has often been 

 chronicled as a British bird, but no reliable evidence of its capture exists, and, as 

 Mr. Seebohm well observes, "there is no bird less addicted to migration than the 

 present species, and it is a bird of too powerful flight to be driven from its native 

 pine-forests even by the heaviest gales." 



While the whole of the preceding members <>f the family may be 

 The Piculets ± o ^ •/ «/ 



included in one subfamily, those remaining for consideration form a 



second. Diminutive in size, the piculets have the beak and the ways of a wood- 

 pecker, but they have a soft tail like the wrynecks, and not a spiny one like the 

 majority of the family. Little is known about them beyond the fact that there are 

 four genera, with a geographical distribution which is one of the most curious of 

 any birds in the world. Two of these genera, Picumnus and Nesoctites, have the 



