Page 15 - St Giles Catesby booklet MC StG 20210723 e-flip_Neat

Ivory-billed woodpecker and willow oak

"The largest white-bill Wood-pecker" was Mark Catesby's name for this
spectacular bird, "somewhat larger than a Crow", he wrote. The males
possessed a large peaked crest composed of scarlet feathers. Several native
American tribes in eastern North America are known to have used this
bird for making ceremonial objects, including the headdresses of their
chiefs.
There have been no uncontested sightings of ivory-billed
woodpeckers in the wild since the mid-1940s and the bird is now generally
treated as "probably or actually extinct". So, like the Carolina parakeet and
the passenger pigeon, Mark Catesby unwittingly recorded a now-extinct
species.
The massive bill of the ivory-billed woodpecker enabled it to drill
into decaying trees trunks where it found the beetle larvae that were its
principal food; Catesby said they fed on "Ants, Wood-worms, and other
Insects, which they hew out of rotten trees".
Woodpeckers were, it seems, among Catesby's favourite birds. He
illustrated no fewer than eight North American species in his Natural
history ... . He depicted this handsome woodpecker in an ungainly stance
on the trunk of a tree of the willow oak {depicted in upper row, left, of
this window}. No doubt he had observed one searching for "wood-
worms" on this oak. The leaves of this oak are long and narrow, similar to
those of the archetypal weeping willow of European gardens although the
trees are not related. Willow oaks produce copious quantities of acorns
from a relatively young age, providing food for squirrels and seed-eating
birds.
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Mark Catesby's depiction of the ivory-billed woodpecker was the basis for the
emblem of the Catesby Commemorative Trust (2003–2020) and now forms the logo
of the Trust's successor, The Mark Catesby Centre. University of South Carolina.
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opposite
Mark Catesby, 1729. The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama islands,
volume 1, plate 16.

Ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis)
perched on willow oak in fruit (Quercus phellos)