IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 25 



bles the tone of a trumpet, or the high note of a clarinet, and can 

 plainly be distinguished at the distance of more than half a mile ; 

 seeming to be immediately at hand, tho 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 ap- 

 pearance; 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 color 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 erect- 

 ed as represented in the plate; this long red plumage being ash- 

 colored 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 downwards. 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 color and consistence of ivory, prodigiously strong 

 and elegantly fluted. The tail is black, tapering from the two ex- 

 terior feathers, which are three inches shorter than the middle ones, 

 and each feather has the singularity of being greatly concave be- 

 low ; the wing is lined with yellowish white ; the legs are about an 

 inch and a quarter long, the exterior toe about the same length, 



VOL. IV. G 



