IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER. 187 
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 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 ; 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 con- 
sistence of ivory, prodigiously strong and elegantly 
fluted. The tail is black, tapering from the two exte- 
