1 8 IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 



of sometimes tasting the Indian corn : the ivory-billed never. 

 His common note, repeated every three or four seconds, very 

 much resembles the tone of a trumpet, or the high note of a 

 clarionet, and can plainly be distinguished at the distance of 

 more than half a mile ; seeming to be immediately at hand, 

 though perhaps more than one hundred yards off. This it 

 utters while mounting along the trunk or digging into it. At 

 these times it has a stately and novel appearance; and the 

 note instantly attracts the notice of a stranger. Along the 

 borders of the Savannah river, between Savannah and Augusta, 

 I found them very frequently ; but my horse no sooner heard 

 their trumpet-like note, than, remembering his former alarm, 

 he became almost ungovernable. 



The ivory-billed woodpecker is twenty inches long, and 

 thirty inches in extent ; the general colour is black, with a 

 considerable gloss of green when exposed to a good light ; 

 iris of the eye, vivid yellow ; nostrils, covered with recumbent 

 white hairs ; fore part of the head, black ; rest of the crest, 

 of a most splendid red, spotted at the bottom with white, 

 which is only seen when the crest is erected, as represented in 

 the plate; this long red plumage being ash-coloured at its 

 base, above that white, and ending in brilliant red ; a stripe 

 of white proceeds from a point, about half an inch below each 

 eye, passes down each side of the neck, and along the back, 

 where they are about an inch apart, nearly to the rump ; the 

 first five primaries are wholly black ; on the next five 

 the white spreads from the tip, higher and higher, to the 

 secondaries, which are wholly white from their coverts down- 

 ward. These markings, when the wings are shut, make the 

 bird appear as if his back were white : hence he has been 

 called by some of our naturalists the large white-backed 

 woodpecker. The neck is long ; the beak an inch broad at 

 the base, of the colour and consistence of ivory, prodigiously 

 strong and elegantly fluted. The tail is black, tapering from 

 the two exterior feathers, which are three inches shorter than 

 the middle ones, and each feather has the singularity of being 



