IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 



Campepbilus principalis Gray. 



Majestic bird ! the broad Ohio knows 



Its presence well. Here and along the banks 



Of Mississippi, -whence luxuriant rise 



Towering to heaven the tall and graceful pines, 



And cypress trees from black and gloomy swamps 



Prodigious of extent : here are its favorite haunts ; 



Among these trees — some in maturity. 



And others overgrown with verdant moss, 



Of every leaf dismantled, standing forth, 



By time's impartial hand memorialized, 



As emblems apt of that unwished decay 



Which all that lives, alas ! must undergo. 



Alexander Wilson. 



^HIS beautiful inhabitant of the vsouthern forest is almost extinct in most localities 

 where it formerly occurred. Erewhile it was found in all the South Atlantic and 

 Gulf States, from North Carolina to Texas, and in the Mississippi valley as far north 

 as southern Missouri, southern Illinois, and southern Indiana. According to the obser- 

 vations of my friend, Mr. Otto Widmann, it still inhabits, though sparingly, the vast 

 forests of the lowlands in southern Missouri. I have several times met with the bird in 

 the extensive forest lands of Harris and Montgomery Co., Texas. In the wilds of the 

 Okeefinokee swamps in southern Georgia the Ivory-billed Woodpecker has been found 

 by Mr. Maurice Thompson a few years ago. Mr. W. E. D. Scott found it breeding in 

 Hillsborough Co., Fla. The nest, w^hich was dug in a large cypress tree in the midst of 

 a dense swamp, was forty-one feet from the ground, and contained one young. The depth 

 of the cavity was fourteen inches. Old residents told Mr. Scott that the bird was once 

 very common in that region. On the day the nest was found, eleven of the birds were 

 counted in the swamp, occasionally four or five were seen at one time. The eggs of the 

 Ivory-billed Woodpecker are very rare in collections. The Public Museum, in Milwaukee, 

 Wis., contains a set of three, presented by the late Capt. B. F. Goss, who told me that 

 they were collected in the Neches River bottom, Jaspei" Co., Texas, on May 3, 1885. 

 The cavity was about twenty-four inches deep, situated forty feet from the ground, and 

 the entrance was large enough to admit Mr. Goss' hand. 



Audubon describes the favorite haunts of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in the follow- 

 ing vivid language: 



"I wish, kind reader, it were in my power to present to your mind's eye the 

 favorite resort of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Would that I could describe the extent 

 of those deep morasses, overshadowed by millions of dark, gigantic cypresses, spreading 

 their sturdy, moss-covered branches as if to admonish man to pause and reflect on the 

 many difficulties which he must encounter, should he persist in venturing farther into 

 their almost inaccessible recesses, extending for miles before him, where he would be 

 interrupted by huge projecting branches, here and there the mossy trunk of a fallen and 

 decaying tree, and thousands of creeping and twining plants of numberless species ! 

 Would that I could represent to you the dangerous nature of the ground, its oozing, 

 spongy, and miry disposition, although covered with a beautiful but treacherous carpeting. 



