Description
The Black Woodpecker measures 45 to 55 cm (18 to 22 in) long with a 64 to 84 cm (25 to 33 in) wingspan. Body weight is approximately 250 to 400 g (8.8 to 14 oz) on average. Among standard measurements, the wing chord is 22.7 to 26 cm (8.9 to 10 in), the tail is 15.9 to 17.3 cm (6.3 to 6.8 in), the very long bill is 5 to 6.7 cm (2.0 to 2.6 in) and the tarsus is 3.6 to 4 cm (1.4 to 1.6 in). It is easily the largest woodpecker in its range and is second in size only to the Great Slaty Woodpecker amongst the woodpecker species certain to exist. The plumage of this crow-sized woodpecker is entirely black apart from a red crown. In males, the entire crown is red, but in females only the top hindcrown is red with the rest of the body all black. The juvenile Black Woodpecker is similar but is less glossy, with a duller red crown and a paler grey throat and bill . The piercing yellow eyes and manic, high-pitched calls of the black woodpecker have made it the villain of fairy tales throughout its range. Their voice is remarkable in that it has two different calls. One is a short single high-pitched note, a loud, whistling kree-kree-kree, done only twice in a row. The other is a screech-like shrill while in flight. Unlike other woodpecker species, the Black Woodpecker does not have a dipping, bounding flight but instead flies with slow, unsteady-seeming wing beats with its head raised.
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“Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)