File:The birds of Europe (1837) (14565358128).jpg

Identifier: birdsEuropeIIIGoul (find matches)
Title: The birds of Europe
Year: 1837 (1830s)
Authors: Gould, John, 1804-1881
Subjects: Pictorial works Birds
Publisher: London, Printed by R. and J.E. Taylor, pub. by the author
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
ood consists of various insects and their larvae. It incubates, as isusual with these birds, in the holes of trees without forming any nest; the eggs are white, and four or five innumber. It may always be distinguished from the Greater Spotted Woodpecker of England by the blotches alongthe flanks, by the pure white of the rump and the more extended crimson of the abdomen. The male has the crown of the head crimson ; the forehead yellowish white ; the cheeks, back of the neck,rump, and chest white; a black moustache stretching from the base of the bill to the occiput; and the sidesof the chest and flanks marked with longitudinal black dashes; the upper part of the back, shoulders, andmiddle tail-feathers black : the wings and outer tail-feathers barred with black and white ; the abdomen andtail-coverts crimson ; the irides red. The female has the crown of the head black instead of crimson ; in other respects she resembles the male. We have figured a male and female of the natural size.
Text Appearing After Image:
<G K E A T SPOTTED WOOIPicas major; /Zin/t.) t< SfaH-ye-& cn-tit,?,?.,: 2k/ .7~r,Md ?.■ )-.;iL-;;h GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER. Picus major, Linn.Le Pic epeiche. This familiar species of the group of Spotted Woodpeckers enjoys a range of habitat more extensive,perhaps, than any other of its European i-elatives, there being no wooded districts, especially in the centralportions of Europe, where it is not extremely common. In England it abounds in forests, woods, large parks,and gardens. The group to which it belongs, although occasionally descending to the ground in search offood, are far more arboreal in their habits and manners than the Green Woodpeckers represented by the Picusviridis, caniceps, and several others from the Himalayan mountains. They exhibit great dexterity in traversingthe trunks of trees and the larger decayed limbs in quest of larvae and coleopterous insects which lurk beneaththe bark, and to obtain which they labour with great

Note About Images