18 
IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 
much resembles the tone of a trumpet, or the high note of a 
clarionet, and can plainly be distinguished at the distance of 
more than 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, remembering 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 
considerable 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 
downward. 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, 
prodigiously strong and elegantly fluted. The tail is black, 
tapering from the two exterior feathers, which are three inches 
shorter than the middle ones, and each feather has the singu- 
larity of being greatly concave below ; the wing is lined with 
yellowish white; the legs are about an inch and a quarter 
long, the exterior toe about the same length, the claws exactly 
