414 
THE IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 
while the others stared with still greater astonishment. After diverting myself for a minute 
or two at their expense, I drew my Woodpecker from under the cover, and a general laugh 
took place. I took him upstairs, and locked him up in my room, while I went to see my 
horse taken care of. 
In less than an hour I returned, and on opening the door, he set up the same distressing 
shout, which now appeared to proceed from grief that he had been discovered in his efforts at 
escape. He had mounted along the side of the window, nearly as high as the ceiling, a little 
below which he had begun to break through. The bed was covered with large pieces of plaster ; 
the lath was exposed for at least fifteen inches square, and a hole large enough to admit the fist, 
open to the weather boards ; so that in less than another hour he would certainly have 
succeeded in making his way through. I now tied a string round his leg, and fastening it to the 
table, again left him. I wished to preserve his life, and had gone off in search of suitable food 
foi As I reascended the stairs, I heard him again hard at work, and on entering had the 
moitification to perceive that he had almost entirely ruined the mahogany table to which 
he was fastened, and on which he had wreaked his whole vengeance. W hi le, engaged in taking 
a drawing, he cut me severely in several places, and on the whole displayed such a noble and 
unconquerable spirit, that I was frequently tempted to restore him to his native woods. 
He lived with me nearly three days, but refused all sustenance, and I witnessed his death 
with regret.” 
The general color of this bird is black, glossed with green. The fore part of the head is 
black, and the remainder is covered with a beautiful scarlet crest, each feather being spotted 
towards the bottom with white, and taking a grayish ashen hue at the base. Of course these 
colors can only be seen when the crest is erected. From below the eye a white streak runs 
down the neck, and along the back, nearly to the insertion of the tail, and the secondaries, 
together with their coverts and the tips of some of the primaries, are also white, so that when 
the bird shuts its wings, its back appears wholly white. The tapering tail is black above, 
yellowish- white below, and each feather is singularly concave. The wings are also lined with 
yellowish-white. The bill is white as ivory, strong, fluted along its length, and nearly an 
inch broad at the base. The female is plumaged like the male, with the exception of the 
head, which is wholly black, without the beautiful scarlet crest. The total length of the 
Ivory-billed Woodpecker is about twenty inches. 
Wilson says : “Nature seems to have designed for the Ivory-bill a distinguished charac- 
teristic in the superb carmine crest and bill of polished ivory with which she has ornamented 
him. His eye is brilliant and daring ; and his whole frame so admirably adapted for his mode 
of life and method of procuring subsistence, as to impress on the mind of the examiner the 
most reverential ideas of the Creator. His manners also have a dignity in them superior to 
the common herd of Woodpeckers. Trees, shrubbery, fences, old bags, are alike interesting 
to these in their humble, 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, seem- 
ing particularly attached to those prodigious cypress swamps whose crowded giant sons 
stretch their bare and blasted arms midway to the skies. In these almost inaccessible recesses, 
amid ruinous piles of impending timber, his trumpet-like notes 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 cart-loads of bark lying around their roots, and chips of the trunk 
itself, in such quantities as to suggest the idea that half a dozen axe-men had been at work 
there the whole morning. The body of the tree is also disfigured with so numerous and such 
large excavations that one can hardly conceive it possible for the whole to be the work of one 
Woodpecker. With such strength, and an apparatus so powerful, what havoc might he not 
commit if numerous, on our most useful forest trees. And yet, with all these appearances, 
and much vulgar prejudice against him, it may fairly be questioned whether he is at all 
injurious ; or, at least, whether his exertions do not contribute most powerfully to the pro- 
tection of our timber. Examine closely the tree where he has been at work, and you will 
soon perceive that it is neither from motives of mischief nor amusement that he slices off the 
