26 



IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER 



the claws exactly semicircular and remarkably powerful, the whole 

 of a light blue or lead color. The female is about half an inch 

 shorter, the bill rather less, and the whole plumage of the head 

 black glossed with green; in the other parts of the plumage she 

 exactly resembles the male. In the stomachs of three which I 

 opened, I found large quantities of a species of worm called borers, 

 two or three inches long, of a dirty cream color, with a black head; 

 the stomach was an oblong pouch, not muscular like the gizzards 

 of some others. The tongue was worm-shaped, and for half an 

 inch at the tip as hard as horn, flat, pointed, of the same white co- 

 lor as the bill, and thickly barbed on each side. 



