IJd Hasbrouck on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. [April. 



TME PRESENT STATUS OF THE IVORY-BILLED 

 WOODPECKER {CAMPEPHILUS PRINCIPALIS). 



BY EDWIN M. HASBROUCK. 



The last fifty years of American ornithology have wit- 

 nessed tiic grackial diminution of several of our species of l:)irds 

 once extremely common, and with two in particular this amounts 

 to practical extermination. The first of these to disappear was 

 the Great Auk i^Plantiis impcnnis) last heard of in 1844 ; the 

 second, the Labrador Duck {Ca7nptolal?nus labradorius)., 'wni^ 

 formerly common as fiu" south as Chesapeake Bav, but is now 

 exceedingly rare and perhaps extinct. 



For some years it has been a common belief that two more 

 species were fast following in the same direction ; the Carolina 

 Paroquet (yConiirus ca?-olhiensis)^ and the Ivory-billed Wood- 

 pecker {Campepkilus principalis). Mr. Chapman, in his 

 search for the Paroquet, proved conclusively that it is by no 

 means so nearly exterminated as formerly supposed, and in a 

 paper* before the Linnasan Society of New York showed that it 

 is still more or less common in the wilder and more remote parts 

 of Florida ; and an attemjDt will be made to show that the bird in 

 question, while by no means as abundant as Co7itirus^ is still 

 found in greater or less numbers in many parts of the southern 

 United States, the Mississippi Valley, and in Texas. By many 

 the Ivory-bill and Paroquet are associated together on account of 

 their rarity and almost identical distribution, and for this reason 

 the two are cited here as parallel cases. 



The collection of data concerning the relative abundance and 

 distril)ution of Cainpephilus principalis has for some time past 

 been to me of considerable interest, but not until recently has the 

 material taken such shape as to warrant publication. Aly per- 

 sonal experience with the species has been extremely limited, 

 although I have had the pleasure of meeting with it in central 

 Florida on one memorable occasion referred to farther on ; for 

 the present, however, I shall confine my attention to the former 

 and j)resent actual distribution of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in 

 the United States. 



* Proc. Linn. Soc. New York, March 7, 1890. 



