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HEMICERCUS HARTLAUBL.

Hartlaub’s Heart-spotted Woodpecker.

Hemicercus coccometopus, Reich. Handb. Picin. p. 401, descr. ¢ (1854).

Micropicus hartlaubi, Malh. Monogr. Picid. i. p. 189, pl. xli. figs. 5, 6, 7 (1861).

Hemicercus hartlaubi, Salvad. Atti R. Accad. Torin. iii. p. 526 (1868).—Id. Ucc. Born. p. 47 (1874).
Hemicircus hartlaubi, Gray, Cat. Picid. B. M. p. 70 (1868).

 

In my description of P. concretus I have already referred to the present species, concerning which very
little is left me to say. It differs from the true HZ. sordidus of Eyton, with which it has generally been
confounded, in having the entire crest red, whereas /. sordidus has the hinder part of the head and occipital
crest grey, and the crown only red. My own specimens of HZ. hartlaubi are from Java; and in the British
Museum area pair collected by Mr. Wallace in that island; while according to Count Salvadori it is
found in Sumatra and Borneo, the latter habitat depending on a skin so labelled in Count Turati’s collection
at Milan. I have a skin of this bird also from Malacca; so that it is apparently the most widely spread, as
well as at the same time one of the most distinct, of these little Woodpeckers.

Adult male.—General colour above black, the feathers barred across and edged with white, leaving a
large heart-shaped spot at the end of each feather; lower back grey, with narrow tips of creamy buff to
some of the feathers ; rump uniform creamy buff; upper tail-coverts black, tipped with the latter colour ;
tail black ; wing-coverts uniform with the back ; quills black, the primaries creamy white along their inner
webs ; the secondaries minutely notched on the outer web with creamy buff, these markings increasing in
size towards the innermost, which are barred across with creamy buff and therefore resemble the back ; crown
of head scarlet vermilion, ending in a very long occipital crest; down the hind neck a line of sandy buff
feathers, and another down the sides of the latter; round the eye a bare space; eyebrow and entire sides
of the face and of the neck, as well as the whole of the under surface, clear leaden grey, darker on the
breast ; the feathers of the vent, under tail-coverts, and lower flanks black, broadly edged with creamy
white; under wing-coverts and edge of the wing creamy buff. Total length 5 inches, culmen 0°8, wing
3°45, tail 1-1, tarsus 0°65.

Adult female.—In general colour resembling the male, but distinguished at once by the absence of the
scarlet crown, this part being leaden grey like the breast.

The above descriptions are those of a pair of birds in my own collection, the same pair being figured in
the Plate of the size of life.