14 IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 



half a mile; seeming to be immediately at hand, though perhaps 

 more than one hundred yards off. This it utters while mounting 

 along the trunk, or digging into it. At these times it has a 

 stately and novel appearance; and the note instantly attracts the 

 notice of a stranger. Along the borders of the Savannah river, 

 between Savannah and Augusta, I found them very frequently; 

 but my horse no sooner heard their trumpet-like note, than re- 

 membering his former alarm, he became almost ungovernable. 

 The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is twenty inches long, and 

 thirty inches in extent; the general colour is black, with a con- 

 siderable gloss of green when exposed to a good light; iris of 

 the eye vivid yellow; nostrils covered with recumbent white 

 hairs; fore part of the head black, rest of the crest of a most 

 splendid red, spotted at the bottom with white, which is only 

 seen when the crest is erected, as represented in the plate; this 

 long red plumage being ash-coloured at its base, above that 

 white, and ending in brilliant red; a stripe of white proceeds 

 from a point, about half an inch below each eye, passes down 

 each side of the neck, and along the back, where they are about 

 an inch apart, nearly to the rump; the first five primaries are 

 wholly black, on the next five the white spreads from the tip 

 higher and higher to the secondaries, which are wholly white 

 from their coverts downwards: these markings, when the 

 wings are shut, make the bird appear as if his back were white, 

 hence he has been called, by some of our naturalists, the large 

 White-backed Woodpecker; the neck is long; the beak an inch 

 broad at the base, of the colour and consistence of ivory, pro- 

 digiously strong, and elegantly fluted; the tail is black, taper- 

 ing from the two exterior feathers, which are three inches 

 shorter than the middle ones, and each feather has the, singulari- 

 ty of being greatly concave below; the wing is lined with yel- 

 lowish white; the legs are about an inch and a quarter long, the 

 exterior toe about the same length, the claws exactly semicir- 

 cular and remarkably powerful, the whole of a light blue or 

 lead colour. The female is about half an inch shorter, the bill 

 rather less, and the whole plumage of the head black, glossed 



