Q74 IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER, 
vulgar prejudice against him, it may fairly be questioned whether he 
is at all injurious; or, at least, whether his exertions do not contribute 
most powerfully to the protection of our timber. Examine ’closely the 
tree where he has been at work, and you will soon. perceive that it is 
neither from motives of mischief nor amusement that he slices off the 
bark, or digs his way into the trunk}, for the sound and healthy tree 
is the least object of his attention. The diseased, infested with in- 
sects, and hastening to putrefaction, are his favorites ; there the deadly, 
crawling.enemy have formed a lodgment between the bark and ten- 
der wood, to drink up the very vital part of the tree. It. is the ravages 
of these vermin, which the intelligent proprietor of the forest deplores 
as the sole perpetrators of the destruction of his timber. Would it be 
believed that the larve ofan insect, or fly, no larger than a grain of 
rice, should silently, and in one season, destroy some thousand: acres 
of pine-trees, many of them from two to three feet in diameter, and a 
hundred and fifty feet high? Yet whoever passes along the high road 
from Georgetown to Charleston, in South Carolina, about twenty miles. 
from the former place, can have striking and melancholy proofs of this 
fact. In some places, the whole woods, as far as you can see around 
you, are dead, stripped of the bark, their wintry-looking arms and bare 
trunks bleaching in the sun, and tumbling in ruins before every blast, 
presenting a frightful picture of desolation. And yet ignorance and 
prejudice stubbornly persist in directing their indignation against the 
bird now before us, the constant and morta] enemy of these very ver- 
min; as if the hand that probed the wound to extract its cause, should 
be equally detested with that which inflicted it; or as if the thief- 
cies may be accidentally seen in Maryland. To the westward of the Mississippi, itis 
found in all the dense forests bordering the streams which empty their waters into that 
majestié river, from the very declivities of the Rocky Mountains.’ The lower parts 
of the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, are; however, the 
most favorite resorts of this bird, and in those states it constantly resides, breeds, 
and passes a life of peaceful enjoyment, finding a profusion of food in all the deep, 
dark, and gloomy swamps dispersed throughout them. . 
“The flight of this bird is graceful in the extreme, although seldom prolonged to 
more than a few hundred yards at a time, unless when it has to cross a large river, 
which it-does in deep undulations, opening. its wings at first to their full extent, and 
nearly closing them to renew the. propelling impulse. . The transit from one tree to. 
another, evén should the distance be as much as a hundred yards, is performed by 
a single sweep, and the bird appears asif merely swinging itself from the top of the 
one tree to that of the other, forming an ele, aaty curved line. At this moment, all 
the beauty of the plumage is exhibited, and strikes the beholder with pleasure. It 
never utters any sound whilst on wing, unless during the love season; but, at all 
other -times, no sooner -has this bird alighted than its remarkable voice is heard, 
at almost every leap which it makes, whilst ascending against the upper parts of 
the trunk of a tree or its highest branches. Its notes are clear, loud, and yet very” 
plaintive ; they are heard at a considerable distance, perhaps half a ‘mile, and re- 
semble the false high note of :a clarionet. They are usually repeated three times 
in succession, and may be represented. by the monosyllable pait, pait, pait. These 
are heard so frequently as to induce me to say that the bird spends. few minutes of 
the day without uttermg them; and this circumstance leads’ to’ its destruction, 
which Is aimed at, not becanse (as is supposed by some) this species is a destroyer 
of trees, but more because it is a beautiful bird, and its rich scalp attached to the 
upper mandible forms: an ornament for the war-dress of most of our Indians, or for 
the-shot-pouch of our:squatters and hunters, by all of whom. the bird is shot merely 
for that purpose.” — En. 
