IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. XI 



ideas of the Creator. His manners have also a dignity in 

 them superior to the common herd of woodpeckers. Trees, 

 shrubbery, orchards, rails, fence posts, and old prostrate logs, 

 are alike interesting to those, in their humble and indefatigable 

 search for prey ; but the royal hunter now before us, scorns 

 the humility of such situations, and seeks the most towering 

 trees of the forest ; seeming particularly attached to those 

 prodigious cypress swamps, whose crowded giant sons stretch 

 their bare and blasted or moss-hung arms midway to the skies. 

 In these almost inaccessible recesses, amid ruinous piles of 

 impending timber, his trumpet-like note and loud strokes 

 resound through the solitary, savage wilds, of which he seems 

 the sole lord and inhabitant. Wherever he frequents, he 

 leaves numerous monuments of his industry behind him. 

 We there see enormous pine trees with cartloads of bark 

 lying around their roots, and chips of the trunk itself, in such 

 quantities as to suggest the idea that half a dozen of axe-men 



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, even should 

 the distance be as much as a hundred yards, is performed by a single 

 sweep, and the bird appears as if merely swinging itself from the top of 

 the one tree to that of the other, forming an elegantly 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 balf 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 uttering them, 

 and this circumstance leads to its destruction, which is aimed at, not 

 because (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." — Ed. 



