2 BULLETIN 17 4, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The ivorybill is primarily a bird of the great moss-hung southern 

 swamps, where mature timber with its dying branches provides a 

 bounteous food supply of wood-boring larvae, but its habits appar- 

 ently vary in different parts of its range, for the birds I observed 

 in Florida, although nesting in a cypress swamp, did most of their 

 feeding along its borders on recently killed young pines that were 

 infested with beetle larvae. They even got down on the ground 

 like flickers to feed among palmetto roots on a recent burn. In 

 Louisiana, on the other hand, the nesting birds observed confined 

 their activities to a mature forest of oak, sweetgum, and hackberry, 

 and paid little attention to the cypress trees along the lagoons. 



SpHng. — ^At what time the winter groups of ivorybills break up 

 and spring activities commence is rather diflBcult to state, for there 

 seems to be considerable irregularity to the breeding season. Judged 

 from published records of its nests, the period of greatest activity 

 would seem to be late March and early April. According to Audu- 

 bon (1842) : "The ivory -billed woodpecker nestles earlier in spring 

 than any other species of its tribe. I have observed it boring a hole 

 for that purpose in the beginning of March." Scott (1881) reports 

 taking an incubating female in Florida on January 20, 1880, and 

 (1888) of finding a nest containing one young female about one- 

 third grown on March 17, 1887. Kidgway (1898) likewise speaks 

 of shooting a male that left its nest hole February 15, 1898, and 

 Hoyt (1905) states that "in Florida they begin building the latter 

 part of January, and if undisturbed the eggs are laid by February 

 10th." In 1937 James Tanner (MS.) discovered a nest in Louisiana 

 from which the fledgling left on March 30, fully 2 months earlier 

 than any previous records from the same locality, and in 1938 ap- 

 parently the same pair of birds had young the last week in February. 

 In contrast to these dates we find 10 records of April nesting, 5 

 for May, and 1 (Beyer, 1900) of a young bird just out of the nest 

 in July. The latter records might well constitute second attempts 

 at nesting. The Florida birds, in general, start earlier than those in 

 Louisiana, but at best there seems to be less regularity to the com- 

 mencement of the nesting period than is found with most of our 

 North American woodpeckers. In this, the ivorybill may register 

 its affinity with tropical birds in general, the ivorybill being the 

 most northern representative of an otherwise tropical or semitropical 

 genus. There is some evidence for believing that ivorybills wander 

 over considerably larger territories in winter than those to which 

 they confine their activities in the spring, but little definite informa- 

 tion has thus far been recorded on any of their before and after 

 breeding activities. 



