8 BULLETIN 174, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



to the folded secondaries, is conspicuously white, as are also the sec- 

 ondaries, all but five or six of the outermost primaries, and the under 

 wing coverts. The white nasal plumes and anterior edges of the 

 lores more or less match the ivory-white bill and help to emphasize 

 its size. The iris is pale, clear lemon-yellow in both sexes, and the 

 tarsi and toes are light gray. 



Food. — Audubon (1842) mentions grapes, persimmons, and hack- 

 berries as food of the ivorybills in addition to beetles, larvae, and large 

 grubs. Mcllhenny, in his communication to Bendire (1895), men- 

 tions their feeding on acorns, but Maurice Thompson (1885) asserts 

 that "it is only woodpeckers which eat insects and larvae (dug out of 

 rotten wood) exclusively." Allen and Kellogg (1937) report: 



We were never able to follow a bird continuously through the forest of either 

 Louisiana or Florida for more than an hour before it would make a long flight 

 and we would be unable to find it again. Ordinarily upon leaving the nest-tree 

 or its immediate environs the bird would fly at least a hundred yards before 

 stopping. Then it would feed for from a few minutes to as long as half an 

 hour on a dead tree or dead branch before making a short flight to another 

 tree. It might make a dozen such short flights and then, without any warning 

 and for no apparent reason, it would start off on a long flight through the forest 

 that would take it entirely out of sight. 



Audubon states that "it seldom comes near the ground" ; but the birds we 

 have watched behave no differently from pileated woodpeckers in this respect, 

 sometimes working high up in the trees but at other times within five or ten 

 feet of the ground. The female of the Florida pair which we watched for over 

 an hour on a "burn" sometimes got down on the ground around the seared, 

 prostrate trunks of the saw palmettos, hopping like a Flicker, while her mate 

 stayed on the trunks of the pines five to ten feet up. We never saw the Louisi- 

 ana birds on the ground but there was plenty of evidence, both in Florida and 

 Louisiana, that a bird will continue scaling the bark from recently killed trees 

 for the beetle larvae beneath, clear to the base of the tree, until the tree stands 

 absolutely naked with the bark piled around its base. 



Frequently they return again and again to the same tree until they have 

 entirely stripped it. At one time we thought* this was their chief method of 

 feeding, but we have since watched them digging for borers exactly like hairy 

 or pileated woodpeckers. At one time we watched the female working at a deep 

 gash in the tall stub of a dead gum, which was apparently a favorite feeding 

 place. She clung to the spot for about five minutes, occasionally picking hard, 

 but never chipping off any large flakes that would account for the depth of the 

 hole which was exactly like that made by pileated woodpeckers,— about four 

 inches deep and eighteen inches long. Finally she flew and disappeared in the 

 direction of the nest which was about two hundred yards away. In a few 

 minutes the male ivorybill came to the same spot where the female had been 

 working and he, too, picked at the hole and stayed there for several minutes. At 

 the time we decided that either the ivorybills or perhaps the pileateds had made 

 the gash in the tree for carpenter ants and that the ivorybills were returning each 

 time for more ants. Since the stub was rather rotten and full of wood- 

 pecker drillings, we decided to cut it down the next day and make certain of what 

 the ivorybills were securing. Upon examining the hole made by the birds there 

 was, however, no evidence of carpenter ants, and the deep gash followed the 



