European green woodpecker hole is excavated in a tree; four to six eggs are laid which hatch after 19–20 days. The European green woodpecker measures 30–36 cm in length with a 45–51 cm wingspan. Both sexes are green above and pale yellowish green below, with yellow rump and red crown and nape; the moustachial stripe has a red centre in the male but is solid black in the female. The lores and around the white eye are black in both male and female, except in the Iberian race "P. v." subsp. "sharpei", in which it is dark grey and males have only a
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