DRYOCOPUS MARTIUS. 
Great Black Woodpecker. 
Picus martins, Linn. Faun, Suec., p. 34. 
niger, Briss. Orn., tom. vi. p. 21. 
Dryocopus martins, Boie, Isis, 1826, p. 977. 
Dendrocopns pinetorum, Brehm, Vog. Deutschl., p. 185, tab. 13. fig. 3. 
martins, Brehm, ibid., p. 185. 
Carbonarins martins, Kaup, Natiirl. Syst., p. 131. 
Dryotomus martins, Swains. Faun. Bor.-Amer., p. 301. 
Picus (^Dryocopus) martins. Keys, et Bias. Wirbelth. Eur., p. 34. 
Dryopicos martins, Malh. Mem. Acad. Nation. Metz, 1849, p. 320. 
Dryopicus martins, Malh. Mon. Picid., tom. i. p. 31, tab. 10. figs. 5, 6, 7. 
The Great Black Woodpecker was first described as a British bird by Latham, in 1785, on the authority of 
his friend Mr. Tunstall, who informed him that it had sometimes been seen in Devonshire. During the 
interval between that date and 1869, no less than thirty notices of its occurrence in various English counties 
have been recorded ; and every ornithologist of repute, from Montagu to Yarrell, have included it as a 
conspicuous species in our avifauna ; besides which many other persons — collectors, sportsmen, and country 
gentlemen — have stated to me, and, doubtless, to many others, that, in such and such a wood, on some 
named day, they had seen a Great Black Woodpecker, one or more affirming that they had followed the 
bird from tree to tree without being able, from its extreme shyness, to get within shooting distance. In the 
‘Field,’ of January 29, 1870, Mr. J. E. Harting gave a detailed account of the first twenty-five recorded 
instances of the occurrence of the bird in our island ; and in a note with which he has recently favoured 
me, he has enumerated a number of others, making a total of thirty reported instances of this bird in Great 
Britain. “ It is not likely,” remarks Mr. Harting, “ that they can all he mistakes.” 
I regret, however, that I am unable to endorse this opinion. I had hoped that so fine a Woodpecker 
would have headed our indigenous Picidcs ; but, of the many persons who have asserted the occurrence of 
the bird, not one, I believe, has been able to verify his statement by pointing out where an authenticated 
British-killed specimen is to be seen ; nor, I think, can any public museum or private collection produce one. 
To omit, however, from the present work a species the appearance of which in our island has been asserted 
by so many respectable authorities, would scarcely be just. I therefore give a figure of it, for the purpose of 
showing those who are unacquainted with the bird what it is like, and how it differs from the Greater 
Spotted Woodpecker, the Jackdaw, and the Nutcracker, one or other of which has probably been mistaken 
for it. 
Apart from England, and even just over the North Sea, the Great Black Woodpecker is tolerably common. 
In the pine-forests of Norway, Sweden, and Fin mark it finds a congenial home, breeds, and rears its young. 
It also inhabits Switzerland, Sicily, Turkey, Greece, the Ionian Islands, Germany, Russia, Siberia, and Japan ; 
and, if I mistake not, Mr. Swinhoe showed me specimens from Northern China. It is not found in 
the Atlas range, in North Africa; at least it is not included in Loche’s ‘List of the Birds of Algeria’; 
consequently the European shores of the Mediterranean is the limit of its range in a southern direction. 
From one of the most interesting aceounts of the bird as observed in Sweden I take the liberty of making 
a lengthy extract, nearly in the author’s words : — “ Towards the latter end of May 1856,” says Mr. Simpson, 
“ I happened to be staying with a Dane, the overlooker of a large forest belonging to Count L . When 
he heard that I had come all the way from England to find the ‘ Bo’ of the Spilkraka {Picus martins'), he sent 
for his chief woodman to inquire what chance there was of getting one. The woodman said he had frequently 
seen birds throughout the spring, and had in former years noticed their ‘ Bo,’ but that it was generally so 
high that nobody could get at it ; that this year a pair of birds were known to frequent the edge of a 
clearing about four miles distant, and that if we would accompany him early the next morning we might 
possibly discover the objeet of our search. This w'as cheering intelligence, and caused us to make an early 
start. Our way lay chiefly through a monotonous wood of spruce-firs, very uninteresting in appearance and 
apparently destitute of any species of bird. But on crossing the clearing (a square of about 1000 yards), 
a Spilkraka was seen to slip quietly away from the upper part of a tall spruce and to fly towards the far 
eorner of the square, where he uttered a single warning cry and disappeared. It took us a very short time 
to cross the remaining space in the direction he had gone, and it speedily became manifest that the objeet 
