European green woodpecker to split this species into three distinct species: "P. viridis" (Linnaeus, 1758) and "P. innominatus" (Sarudny & Loudon, 1905). The Iberian green woodpecker, ("P. sharpei"), has been split by some taxonomists including the IOC. More than 75% of the range of the European green woodpecker is in Europe, where it is absent from some northern and eastern parts and from Ireland, Greenland and the Macaronesian Islands, but otherwise distributed widely. Over half of the European population is thought to be in France, Spain and Germany, with substantial numbers also in Portugal, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Russia, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria.
Cuban ivory-billed woodpecker of the Cuban form's behaviour and habitat was not published until 1893, when Juan Gundlach included it in Volume 1 of his "Ornitología Cubana". In Cuba it was usually known by the name of "carpintero real" (royal woodpecker), although this name was also used for other birds. As with "C. principalis", the Cuban ivory-bill was thought to inhabit old-growth forests with a plentiful supply of dead or dying trees; these were a source of the cerambycid and other beetle larvae that formed the bulk of its diet. Most of Cuba's lowland deciduous forests had been cleared by the early twentieth