2l8 '^■EA.^.O^, The Imperial Ivoi-y-billed Woodpecker ■ \ji^M 



were made to its history and nothing has been published on its 

 habits. In 1890 the British Museum Catalogue enumerated sev- 

 eral additional specimens and gave its range as extending from 

 Ciudad in the State of Durango, northward through Chihuahua to 

 within fifty miles of the Arizona border. The latter record, first 

 published in 'The Auk,' was made by Lieut. H. C. Benson, 

 U. S. A., during a scouting expedition after Apache Indians in 

 northern Chihuahua. Afterwards the late Dr. Audley C. Buller 

 secured specimens about 150 miles south of BolaiTos, in the Sierra 

 de Juanacatlan, western Jalisco, and Mr. W. B. Richardson took 

 others in the Sierra cle Valparaiso in northern Zacatecas. 



During my visit to the former locality, in the spring of 1897, 

 the residents told me that Ivory-bills were found sparingly in the 

 surrounding mountains and exhibited the scalp of one that had 

 been killed a few months before. In company with two natives, 

 my assistant and I rode over the undulating mountain summits 

 for an entire day on a fruitless quest for these birds. Several 

 species of pines, oaks and madroiios made up the forest, and 

 beautiful little park-like basins open here and there forming ideal 

 spots for the big Woodpeckers, but we failed to see one. The 

 people united in assuring us that the birds live there every sum- 

 mer and it is probable that they lead a more wandering life dur- 

 ing the winter months and sometimes absent themselves from 

 their summer haunts ; but it is quite certain that they are not in 

 any sense migratory. We found them in the state of Michoacan, 

 considerably farther south than any previous record, and subse- 

 quently visited other parts of their range. While collecting in 

 the pine forest near Patzcuaro, Michoacan, during the summer of 

 1892, a Mexican soldier brought in an Ivory-bill killed a few 

 miles away, but it was not until later in the season that we had 

 the satisfaction of seeing the bird in life. In the autumn of that 

 year three of us left Patzcuaro on horseback to go back twenty- 

 five miles into the forest to the Indian village of Nahuatzin. 

 After leaving the shore of Lake Patzcuaro our trail led through a 

 beautiful upland country of volcanic origin, overgrown with open 

 pine forest, in which grassy parks opened here and there afford- 

 ing charming vistas. We were riding quietly, at an altitude of 

 about 7000 feet, when the flash of bird-wings was noted in the 



