IVOEY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 
13 
pecker are well known to the savages, no wonder they should 
attach great value to it, having both beauty, and, in their esti- 
mation, distinguished merit to recommend it. 
This bird is not migratory, but resident in the countries where 
it inhabits. In the low counties of the Carolinas, it usually 
prefers the large-timbered cypress swamps for breeding in. In 
the trunk of one of these trees, at a considerable height, the 
male and female alternately, and in conjunction, dig out a large 
and capacious cavity for their eggs and young. Trees thus dug 
out have frequently been cut down, with sometimes the eggs 
and young in them. This hole according to information, for I 
have never seen one myself, is generally a little winding, the 
better to keep out the weather, and from two to five feet deep. 
The eggs are said to be generally four, sometimes five, as large 
as a pullet’s, pure white, and equally thick at both ends; a de- 
scription that, except in size, very nearly agrees with all the 
rest of our Woodpeckers. The young begin to be seen abroad 
about the middle of June. Whether they breed more than once 
in the same season is uncertain. 
So little attention do the people of the countries where these 
birds inhabit, pay to the minutiae of natural history, that, gene- 
rally speaking, they make no distinction between the Ivory- 
billed and Pileated Woodpecker, represented in the same plate; 
and it was not till I showed them the two birds together, that 
they knew of any difference. The more intelligent and observ- 
ing part of the natives, however, distinguish them by the name 
of the large and lesser Log-cocks. They seldom examine them 
but at a distance, gunpowder being considered too precious to 
be thrown away on Woodpeckers; nothing less than a Turkey 
being thought worth the value of a load. 
The food of this bird consists, I believe, entirely of insects 
and their larvae. The Pileated Woodpecker is suspected 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 clarinet, 
and can plainly be distinguished at the distance of more than 
