562 
PICARIAN BIRDS. 
it is not often seen, and, indeed, its presence is generally to be detected by its 
tapping on the trees, or when flying from one tree to another, at which times the 
black-and-white bars on the extended wings render it rather conspicuous. It 
often sits on a branch horizontally, or runs along the under side like a nuthatch. 
It has the habit, in the breeding-season, of making a drumming noise on the bark 
of trees, which can be heard for a great distance, and is evidently a call from one 
bird to the other, as its note is so weak that the sound of it would not travel far. 
This drumming is performed on the smaller branches of a poplar tree at a great 
height from the ground, and the nest-hole is also often drilled in the small 
branches of a poplar, near the top of the tree, making it a matter of some 
difficulty and danger to procure the nest. The range of this woodpecker is almost 
the same as that of the preceding species, and, like it, it is represented in North 
Africa and in Asia by allied species. Another species found in most parts of 
Europe, and supposed to have occurred once in England, is the white-backed 
woodpecker (D. leuconotus). As its name implies it has a white back, with a 
black mantle, a red crown, and broad black streaks on the flanks. The female, 
as in most other species of this genus, has a black head. Its range extends across 
Northern Asia to Manchuria and Corea. Generally placed in the same genus as 
the last, the middle spotted woodpecker (D. medius ) is by some regarded as the 
representative of a distinct genus ( Dendrocoptes ), on account of its differently 
shaped beak, and its distinct style of plumage. Unknown in England, this species 
is distributed over the greater part of Europe, as far east as the Caucasus; but 
is replaced in Asia Minor and Persia by St. John’s woodpecker (_D. sancti- 
johannis). 
Three-Toed Agreeing with three other Indian genera in the absence of the 
woodpeckers. q rs t toe, the se ven species of three-toed woodpeckers are rather 
densely feathered birds, with an Arctic or Alpine habitat. Thus we find them 
distributed over the high north of America, Europe, and Asia, occurring only 
elsewhere 011 mountainous areas, where the same temperature is experienced, 
as, for instance, on the Kocky Mountains as far south as Mexico, the mountains 
of Germany and Switzerland, and similar localities in Asia, including the mountains 
of China, but not occurring in the Himalaya. One of the best known species is 
the European three-toed woodpecker ( Picoides tridcictylus), a bird of moderate 
size, measuring rather more than 8 inches in length, and easily recognised by the 
yellow head and white breast of the male. 
Pigmy Merely mentioning that the African cardinal-woodpeckers ( Den - 
woodpeckers, dropicus) are small-sized birds, differing from European forms by 
their shorter tail and rather longer legs, while most of them have yellow shafts to 
the quills of the wings, and the wing markedly rounded, we pass on to the pigmy 
woodpeckers ( Iyngipicus ). As their name implies, these are birds of small size, 
and generally of brown plumage, with white bars, while most of the species, instead 
of a red head, have a little ornamental tuft of red feathers on the side of the 
crown. The pigmy woodpeckers have also a more pointed wing than their allies, 
and their distribution is peculiar, since they are found in Senegambia and North- 
Eastern Africa where they are very rare, and then the genus reappears in India, 
where it is by no means uncommon, and thence extends through the- Burmese 
