14 
rVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 
half a mile; seeming to be immediately at hand, though 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 appearance; 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 re- 
membering his former alarm, he became almost ungovernable. 
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is twenty inches long, and 
thirty inches in extent; the general colour is black, with a con- 
siderable 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 erected, as represented in the plate; this 
long red plumage being ash-coloured 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 colour and consistence of ivory, pro- 
digiously strong, and elegantly fluted; the tail is black, taper- 
ing from the two exterior feathers, which are three inches 
shorter than the middle ones, and each feather has the singulari- 
ty of being greatly concave below; the wing is lined with yel- 
lowish white; the legs are about an inch and a quarter long, the 
exterior toe about the same length, the claws exactly semicir- 
cular and remarkably powerful, the whole of a light blue or 
lead colour. The female is about half an inch shorter, the bill 
rather less, and the whole plumage of the head black, glossed 
