BLACK WOODPECKER.
G RE \ 1 HI. U'K WOODPECKER.
Pints martius, PENNANT, MONTAGU.
Pints—A bird th.it makes holes in trees, supposed to be the Woodpecker.
Afar/ins—Martial—warlike; also, belonging to the month of March.
THE Black Woodpecker is found in Europe, in the mountain forests
of Switzerland, as also in Russia, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Holland,
Germany, Italy, and France. It has been met with in Asia, in Siberia
and Persia, and also, by my friend Hugh Edwin Strickland, Esq.,
in Asia Minor. It is a native likewise of some parts of North and
South America.
The following specimens of this bird have been met with in this
country:—Two were shot in Yorkshire, but unfortunately not preserved;
two were seen by Thomas Meynell, Jun., Esq., in the grounds of
his father's seat, the Friarage, at Yarm; and one was shot the first
week in Mar eh, 1846, near Ripley, the seat of Sir William A.
Ingilby, Hart.; one by Lord Stanley, in Lancashire, one on the trunk
of a tree, in Battersea Fields, near London, in the year 1805; one in
the collection of Mr. Donovan; one in Lincolnshire; two in a wood
near Scole, in Norfolk; a pair seen several times in a wood near
Christchurch, in Hampshire; one shot in a nursery garden near
Blandfbrd, in Dorsetshire; and another at Whitchurch, in the same
county; both recorded by Dr. Pulteney. Others, according to Dr.
Latham, in Devonshire, one was killed near Crediton, and others in
some of the southern counties. Alfred Newton, Esq., of Elveden Hall,
mentions also in the ' Zoologist,' page 3278, that one was seen near
Audley End, the seat of Lord Braybrooke, June 5th., 1847; one in
Scotland, as recorded by Sir Robert Sibbald.
In addition to all these, J. Mc* Intosh, Esq., of Charmiustcr, Dorsetshire,
records in 'The Naturalist,' No. 1, page 20, that he has known
these birds to occur more than once ai Charborough Park, in that