WOODPECKERS. 
11 
and blasted or moss-liimg arras midway to tlie skies. 
In these almost inaccessible recesses, amid ruinous 
piles of impending timber, bis trumpet-like note and 
loud strokes resound tlirougli the solitary savage wilds, 
of which he seems the sole lord and inhabitant. 
AVherever he frequents he leaves numerous monuments 
of his industry behind him. AVe 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 had 
been at work there the whole morning. The body of 
the tree is also disfigured with such numerous and such 
large excavations, that one can hardly conceive it pos- 
sible for the whole to be the work of the AV^oodpecker. 
According to Audubon, the food of this species 
consists principally of beetles, larvse, and large grubs. 
No sooner, however, are the grapes of our forests ripe 
than they are eaten by the Ivory-billed AVoodpecker 
with great avidity. I have seen this bird hang by its 
claws to the vines in the position so often assumed by 
a titmouse, and reaching downwards help itself to a 
bunch of grapes with much apparent pleasure. 
The strength of this AYoodpecker, continues the 
same writer, is such, that I have seen it detach pieces 
of bark seven or eight inches in length at a single 
blow of its powerful bill, and, by beginning at the top 
branch of a dead tree, tear off the bark to an extent of 
twenty or thirty feet in the course of a few hours, 
leaping downwards with its body in an upward posi- 
tion, tossing its head to the right and left, or leaning 
it against the bark to ascertain the precise spot where 
the grubs were concealed, and immediately after 
