556 THE IVOEY-BILLED WOODPECKER 



none rid tlie apple-trees of so many vermin as tliis ; digging off the moss wliicli the 

 negligence of the proprietor had suffered to accumulate, and probing every crevice. In 

 fact, the orchard is his favoimte resort in all seasons ; and his industry is unequalled and 

 almost incessant, which is more than can be said of any other species we have. 



In fall he is particularly fond of boring the apple-trees for insects, digging a circular 

 hole through the bark just sufficient to admit his bill ; after that a second, third, &c. in 

 pretty regular horizontal circles round the body of the tree. These parallel circles 

 of holes are often not more than an inch or an inch and a half apart, and sometimes so 

 close together, that I have covered eight or ten of them at once with a dollar. From 

 nearly the surface of the ground up to the first fork, and sometimes far beyond it, the 

 whole bark of many apple-trees is perforated in this manner, so as to appear as if made 

 by successive discharges of buckshot ; and our little Woodpecker, the subject of the 

 present account, is the principal perpetrator of this supposed mischief I say supposed, 

 for, so far from these perforations of the bark being ruinous, they are not only harmless, 

 but, I have good reason to believe, really beneficial to the health and fertility of the tree. 



In more than fifty orchards which I have myself carefully examined, those trees which 

 were marked by the Woodpecker (for some trees they never touch, perhaps because not 

 penetrated by insects) were uniformly the most thriving, and seemingly the most pro- 

 ductive. Many of tliem were upwards of sixty years old, their trunks completely covered 

 with holes, while the branches were broad, luxuriant, and loaded with fruit. Of decayed 

 trees, more than three-fourths were untouched by the AVoodpecker." 



Although a little bird — less than seven inches in length — it is a truly handsome one. 

 The crown of the head is velvety black, its back deep scarlet, and there is a white streak 

 over the eye. Tlie back is black, but is divided by a lateral stripe of puffy or downy 

 white feathers. The wings are black spotted with white, and the tail is also variegated 

 with the same tints. From the base of the beak a black streak runs down the neck. The 

 sides of the neck, the throat, and the whole of the under parts of the body are white. 

 The nostrils are thickly covered with small bristly feathers, probably to protect them from 

 the chips of wood struck off by the beak. The female is known by the greyish white of 

 the abdomen, and the absence of red upon its head. 



Although not the largest of the Woodpecker tribe, the Ivoey-billed Woodpecker, 

 of North America, is perhaps the handsomest and most striking in appearance. 



This splendid bird is armed with a tremendous beak, long, powerful, sharp, and white 

 as ivory, which can be used equally as an instrument for obtaining its food, or as a weapon 

 for repelling the attacks of its enemies, and, in the latter point of view, is a truly 

 formidable arm, as terrible to its enemies as the British bayonet, to which it bears no little 

 resemblance in general shape. 



Few birds are more useful than the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, which wages continual 

 war upon the myriad insects which undermine the bark of forest-trees, and saves the 

 forest giants from falling a prey to their diminutive adversaries. In one season several 

 thousand acres of huge pine-trees, from two to three feet in diameter, and many of them 

 measuring one hundred and fifty feet in height, were destroyed by the larvae of a little 

 insect not bigger than a grain of rice. Besides this creature, there are large grubs and 

 caterpillars that bore their way into the interior of trees, and are the pioneers of the 

 destruction that afterwards follows. 



When the Ivory-biiled Woodpecker has been hard at work upon a tree, he leaves 

 ample traces of his progress in the heaps of bark and wood chips which surround the 

 tree, and which look, according to Wilson, as if a dozen axe-men had been working at the 

 trunk. Strips of bark seven or eight inches in length are often struck off by a single 

 blow, and the body of the tree is covered with great excavations that seem more like the 

 work of steel tools than of a bird's beak. Yet these apparent damages are really useful 

 to the tree, as the sound wood is allowed to remain in its place performing its proper 

 functions, while the decaying substances are scooped out in order that the bird may get 

 at the grubs and beetles that make their home therein. 



As in the case of all Woodpeckers, the beak is also employed in excavating the holes 



