Ivory-billed Woodpeckers by Joseph Bartholomew Kidd After John James Audubon

 

Recently, I decided to try and find a portrait of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers by John James Audubon that I recalled seeing on display in one of the exhibit halls at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City a long time ago. I had no luck finding it again at the museum during periodic visits. However, it turned out that it was easy to locate the portrait online. When I did so, I learned that this curiosity was actually an oil on canvas creation painted by Joseph Bartholomew Kidd around the year 1830 that was fashioned after Audubon's watercolor. The painting is currently on display in Gallery 774 at the museum, a gallery which you can surely find by asking one of the museum personnel for its location.

The museum has information on this piece online, and here is an excerpt:

Audubon made his watercolor of the ivory-bill...before 1826, and commissioned Kidd to copy it and other of his bird subjects in oil for display in a traveling exhibition Audubon planned but never realized. The copyist added the landscape background.

Click here to read more about this painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's site.

Ivorybill Search: Across the Pascagoula: Otter Pond and Beyond

Brian Carlisle and Chris Carlisle maintain a fantastic site called "Kints" which documents their ongoing search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in southern Mississippi. Kints (or "kents") refers to the common note or call of the Ivorybill. Chris Carlisle recently did a great post describing their search of the Pascagoula Wildlife Management Area. It includes over six dozen photographs, two of which are posted here, with permission.

Reading through the post along with seeing so many beautiful photos of the forest that the Carlisles searched transported me back to the very special times that I found myself lucky enough to be searching for the Ivorybill, starting at dawn, in similarly beautiful forests in Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina.

Here's an excerpt from the Carlisle brothers' post that describes the forest:

Beautiful, mature second- and third-growth mixed bottomland hardwood and cypress/tupelo swamp forest, with a path running roughly northeast-southwest.  We decided to follow the path northeastward, and walked through some very nice hardwood forest habitat, with many different types of trees -- swamp chestnut oak, water oak, sycamore, holly, red maple, green ash, magnolia, what I believe to be pignut hickory, and shagbark hickory. 

Read the full post here at Kints

Native American Pipe Stem with Ivory-billed Woodpecker Scalp

Here is an image of a Native American pipe stem circa 1800 - 1825. It features an Ivory-billed Woodpecker scalp that is apparent to the far right, in black and red, just to the left of the two blue bands that are separated by a brown band. The pipe belongs to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ecology at Harvard University. It was loaned out to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as part of a beautiful exhibit entitled The Plains Indians - Artists of Earth and Sky, at the museum, March 9 - May 10, 2015.

The book that accompanies this exhibit explains:

"Attached to the stem is the head and scalp of an ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird widely associated with leadership, warfare, and calumet ceremonialism."

Illustration of male Powerful and Crimson-bellied Woodpeckers by George F. Sandström

Illustration by George F. Sandström, © Delaware Museum of Natural History

Continuing with the 6th and final entry in this series, here is a splendid illustration by George F. Sandström which appears on Plate 79 of Woodpeckers of the World by Lester L. Short, published by the Delaware Museum of Natural History (1982). The bird at the upper left of the illustration is a male Powerful Woodpecker, and a male Crimson-bellied Woodpecker appears to the right. 

These two bird species of humid, wet forests are sympatric, occurring together in Columbia, Ecuador and Peru. The Crimson-bellied Woodpecker's range also extends into parts of Panama. The dark bill on these two species is a notable field mark, in contrast to the pale or ivory colored bills that appear in several other species within the same genus.

This illustration is posted here pursuant to permission obtained from the publisher.

Illustration of male Red-necked and Robust Woodpeckers by George F. Sandström

Illustration by George F. Sandström, © Delaware Museum of Natural History

Continuing with the 5th entry in this series, here is a beautiful illustration by George F. Sandström which appears on Plate 80 of Woodpeckers of the World by Lester L. Short, published by the Delaware Museum of Natural History (1982). The bird at the upper portion of the illustration is a male Red-necked Woodpecker and a male Robust Woodpecker appears below.

You can find a detailed profile that I authored of the Red-necked Woodpecker at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Birds of the World site at this link:

Red-necked Woodpecker

 This illustration is posted here pursuant to permission obtained from the publisher.

Three Species of Campephilus Woodpeckers - Crimson-crested, Guayaquil, and Pale-billed Woodpeckers by George F. Sandström

Illustration by George F. Sandström, © Delaware Museum of Natural History

Enjoy this remarkable illustration by George F. Sandström of three species of woodpeckers within the Campephilus genus which appears on Plate 81 of Woodpeckers of the World by Lester L. Short, published by the Delaware Museum of Natural History (1982). The two birds at the upper portion of the illustration are a male Crimson-crested Woodpecker (on the left) and a female Crimson-crested Woodpecker (n the right). The male of this species looks very similar to the two species depicted at the bottom of the illustration - a male Pale-billed Woodpecker (on the left) and a male Guayaquil Woodpecker.

You can find detailed profiles of two of the three species at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Birds of the World site at these links:

Crimson-crested Woodpecker

Pale-billed Woodpecker

 This illustration is posted here pursuant to permission obtained from the publisher.

Illustration of female Magellanic and Cream-backed Woodpeckers by George F. Sanström

Illustration by George F. Sandström, © Delaware Museum of Natural History

Here is another splendid illustration by George F. Sandström of two woodpeckers within the Campephilus genus which appears on Plate 82 of Woodpeckers of the World by Lester L. Short, published by the Delaware Museum of Natural History (1982).  

On the left is a female Magellanic Woodpecker. And on the right is a female Cream-backed Woodpecker. It is a somewhat whimsical illustration because the ranges of these two species does not overlap so that you would never see them together in the wild. Here is the range info for each species from Woodpeckers of the World along with links to their range maps:

Magellanic Woodpecker - Found in temperate forests of southern South America from central eastern Chile and central western Argentina southward along the Andes Mountains and the Chilean lowlands to Tierra del Fuego. Habitat mature southern beech and southern beech-cypress forests from timberline to the coast wherever suitable habitat exists.

Magellanic Woodpecker (Campephilus magellanicus)

Cream-backed Woodpecker - South-central South America from north-central Bolivia (Cochabamba) south through western and central Paraguay to La Rioja, Córdoba, and Entre Rios, Argentina, and to westernmost Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Its range includes all of the chaco (xeric) woodlands, including its extension toward Rio Grande do Sul and Uruguay, subtropical forests of Tucumán and La Rioja, and dry valleys of Bolivia to an elevation of at least 5600 feet (Chilon, Santa Cruz, near Cochabamba border).  

Cream-backed Woodpecker (Campephilus leucopogon)

 

This illustration is posted here pursuant to permission obtained from the publisher.

Illustration of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers by George F. Sandström

Illustration by George F. Sandström, © Delaware Museum of Natural History

Here is a seldom seen, beautiful illustration of a pair of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers that appears on Plate 83 of Woodpeckers of the World by Lester L. Short, published by the Delaware Museum of Natural History (1982).

The book is a comprehensive account of the 198 species in the Picidae family that Short recognized, and it includes a total of 101 plates by artist George F. Sandström that portray these species in their natural colors with exquisite details. As Dean Amadon wrote in the preface:

The success of artist George Sandström's labors will be evident to anyone who leafs through the plates. They permit an efficient comparison of woodpeckers, particularly of closely related species, often grouped on the same or in adjacent plates, from all quarters of the globe; they are an integral part of this treatise.

Plates 79 through 84 depict the 11 species within the Campephilus genus. Eventually, I will post all of the illustrations from those plates here, pursuant to permission obtained from the publisher.

Illustration of Imperial Woodpeckers by George F. Sandström

Illustration by George F. Sandström, © Delaware Museum of Natural History

It is my great pleasure to present you with this fantastic illustration of a pair of Imperial Woodpeckers that appears on Plate 84 of Woodpeckers of the World by Lester L. Short, published by the Delaware Museum of Natural History (1982).  

The book is a comprehensive account of the 198 species in the Picidae family that Short recognized, and it includes a total of 101 plates by artist George F. Sandström that portray these species in their natural colors with exquisite details. As Dean Amadon wrote in the preface:

The success of artist George Sandström's labors will be evident to anyone who leafs through the plates. They permit an efficient comparison of woodpeckers, particularly of closely related species, often grouped on the same or in adjacent plates, from all quarters of the globe; they are an integral part of this treatise.

Plates 79 through 84 depict the 11 species within the Campephilus genus. Eventually, I will post all of the illustrations from those plates here, pursuant to permission obtained from the publisher. It seemed fitting to start with the majestic Imperial Woodpecker, the largest woodpecker in the world!

Tim Gallagher has a blog devoted to his book on the Imperial Woodpecker here:

Imperial Dreams

Invasive Mink Preys on Magellanic Woodpeckers on Navarino Island in Southern Chile

Here's a great video of a female Magellanic Woodpecker excavating a cavity.

In a recent study, Jaime Jiménez and his research colleagues document predation of Magellanic Woodpeckers by invasive American minks on Navarino Island in Southern Chile. Navarino Island is a 955-square mile (2,473 kilometers) area located between Tierra del Fuego to the north and Cape Horn to the south. Mink apparently arrived on the island in the 1990s. Magellanic Woodpeckers are accustomed to an intensive level of feeding on the ground on the island, something they are not as prone to do on the mainland where three species of foxes and other potential predators exist.

The Magellanic Woodpecker is a charismatic species notable for being the largest extant woodpecker in the Americas (after the Imperial and Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, other members of the Campephilus genus that are possibly extinct). The authors present a compelling argument for broadening current management actions to control the mink population in order to protect the Magellanic Woodpecker and other less noticed native species.

Jiménez, Jaime E., et al. "Potential impact of the Alien American Mink (Neovison vison) on Magellanic woodpeckers (Campephilus magellanicus) in Navarino Island, Southern Chile." Biological Invasions (2013): 1-6.

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Red-necked Woodpecker Species Account

pica-pau-de-barriga-vermelha femea, a photo by vhobusfoto on Flickr. 

I recently authored a detailed species account on the Red-necked Woodpecker at Neotropical Birds Online (NBO).  It begins: 

The Red-necked Woodpecker is a large, spectacular Campephilus woodpecker of the rainforest.

 It is fairly common in Colombia and Venezuela and across the Guianas, and south through

 Amazonia to northern Bolivia.  

Each species account in NBO includes information on the identification, distribution, life history, conservation, and research references for a particular bird along with image and sound files for that species.  Visit NBO to read more about profiled Neotropical bird species and to see how you may contribute to authoring or enhancing additional species accounts!

Red-necked Woodpecker species account at Neotropical Birds Online

The superb photo you see here is a female Red-necked Woodpecker near Matto Grasso, Brazil.  It is posted here with permission of talented wildlife photographer Valdir Hobus. 

See more of V. Hobus' fine photography here

Carpintero Lomo Blanco

Carpintero Lomo Blanco, a photo by Javier Parigini on Flickr.

What an amazing portrait this is of a pair of Cream-backed Woodpeckers! The male is perched on the side of the tree, distinguished by his entirely red head with that black and white oval patch. The female is perched at the cavity, and she is distinguished by her black colored forehead and center of crest, and that rather dramatic looking white patch from the base of her bill tapering to a point below the rear of her ear coverts.

This fine photo was taken by Javier Parigini, and it is posted here with his permission.

View more of Javier Parigini's Photography here.

Powerful Woodpecker at Rio Blanco in Colombia

Powerful Woodpecker - Rio Blanco - Colombia_S4E2412, a photo by fveronesi1 on Flickr.

What a fine-looking male Powerful Woodpecker here in profile in full sunlight! Sexing this species is easy enough because the female's crest is black. This fine photo was taken by Francesco Veronesi at Rio Blanco, Colombia. It is posted here under Creative Commons license.

Ivory-billed Woodpeckers & Others in the Campephilus Genus

Click the image below to check out one of the largest collections of 

Campephilus woodpecker photos on the Internet!

You will find them in a Flickr group that I moderate called "Ivory-billed Woodpeckers & Others in the Campephilus Genus." Contributors share photos with this group on a weekly basis, so this marvelous collection of 4,985+ images is always growing!

How This Site is Organized

Everything that appears on this page, from top to bottom, is the Home Page.

• New Posts appear above this one
• They eventually get backdated to group them with their respective topics 

• Resource Posts appear below this one
• They are here to serve new and returning visitors with readily available info on all the Campephilus species names, major media links, etc.
• They remain on the Home Page

•  Easily Find What You Want
• Use Image Icons in the left sidebar to retrieve posts by species
• Select the News and Research buttons for posts on those areas of interest.
• Or, Select Any Category from the right sidebar to retrieve posts by category

Campephilus Species

There are either 11 or 12 Campephilus species depending on how the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is classified.  For more details, see a separate post at this link.

RANGE MAPS

Click on a species name to see its range map at Avibase, courtesy of NatureServe.

Cream-backed Woodpecker (Campephilus leucopogon)

Crimson-bellied Woodpecker (Campephilus heamatogaster)

Crimson-crested Woodpecker (Campephilus melanoleucos)

Cuban Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis bairdii)

Guayaquil Woodpecker (Campephilus gayaquilensis)

Imperial Woodpecker (Campephilus imperialis)

Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis)

Magellanic Woodpecker (Campephilus magellanicus)

Pale-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus guatemalensis)

Powerful Woodpecker (Campephilus pollens)

Red-necked Woodpecker (Campephilus rubricollis)

Robust Woodpecker (Campephilus robustus)

Various other sites offer the range map and other species information for each Campephilus woodpecker.   See, for example, this page at Xeno-canto:

Species Overview page for the Crimson-bellied Woodpecker

Campephilus Nomenclature

For a most incredibly detailed resource on Campephilus woodpecker nomenclature, visit Zoonomen's Zoological Nomenclature Resource at this link.   (It will take some searching to find "campephilus" there.  Select PICIFORMES in the left frame, and then Campephilus will appear near the bottom of the large frame).

Also, you can view a nice, and even more user-friendly, presentation of Campephilus taxonomic hierarchy and nomenclature drawn from Zoonomen at this site:

Integrated Taxonomic Information System

Campephilus Subspecies

At Avibase, the Cuban Ivory-billed Woodpecker is listed as a subspecies of the US Ivory-billed Woodpecker along with several other Campephilus subspecies.  Follow this logo link, then enter "Campephilus" in the search box to retrieve the list with subspecies:

WolframAlpha on Campephilus Woodpeckers

Here is an image from the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) search result from Wolfram Alpha's computational knowledge search engine that details Campephilus taxonomy.

Taxonomic network:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=ivory-billed+woodpecker
Source:  Wolfram Alpha LLC.  2010.  Wolfram|Alpha.
(accessed February 20, 2010).

By the way, if you've never entered your birth day, month and year into Wolfram Alpha, you may want to try it out here.

A Fossil Campephilus Species

In his book In Search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Jerome A. Jackson relates that a fossil species was described as Campephilus dalquesti by Pierce Brodkorb, an American ornithologist and paleontologist.  This fossil species was discovered in Scurry County in central Texas, and dated to the late Pliocene epoch.

I wonder what C. dalquesti looked like.   Maybe a bit like this dino-bird!?  At least the colors look right. The dino-bird portrayed below is Anchiornis huxleyi - you can find more info here.

Check out the amazing video at this link:

Finding Dino Color In Fossil Feathers

Handbook of the Birds of the World by Lynx Edicions

The Internet Bird Collection is a non-profit endeavor sponsored by the Handbook of the Birds of the World, whose publishers happened to select the Magellanic Woodpecker, the largest woodpecker in South America, to represent the entire Picidae family on the cover of Volume 7.

http://www.lynxeds.com/hbw/handbook-birds-world-v7

Some people were not quite as thrilled with that selection as I was.   In an overwhelmingly positive review of the book, Geoffrey Carpentier had this to say about the cover:

With a book of this nature, one has to try very hard before finding fault. My only quibble:

I didn't like the picture of the Magellanic Woodpecker on the cover. It seems

an ungainly bird and a prettier one could have been chosen. 

Oh well!

Listen, Look and Watch at the Macaulay Library

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Macaulay Library bills itself as "the world’s premier scientific archive of natural history audio, video, and photographs."  Follow the link below, and you'll be able to search for over thousands of Campephilus woodpecker media files by common or scientific name.

https://www.macaulaylibrary.org/about/

The Macaulay Library contains the notable 10 min, 20 sec length recording of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers drumming, making kents and also other vocalizations all recorded by Arthur A. Allen and his team in April, 1935.  It also contains a 1 min, 40 sec recording of what may be kent calls of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker recorded by John V. Dennis on February 25, 1968 in Texas.

Listen at Xeno-Canto

Xeno-canto is a community database of shared bird sounds from around the world.  It's an ever-growing collection of bird sounds.  At xeno-canto, you can listen to dozens of Campephilus woodpecker vocalizations, drumming and knocks from 9 out of the 12 species.  Missing are any sounds of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, the Cuban Ivory-billed Woodpecker and the Imperial Woodpecker.  That still leaves a multitude of recordings of the rest of the Campephilus family for your enjoyment and study

http://www.xeno-canto.org/browse.php?query=campephilus

Xeno-canto lets visitors to its site participate by discussing and identifying unknown sounds.  And, if you record bird sounds, you should know that xeno-canto also lets people upload and share their own recordings on the site.

Also, don't miss the highly informative Species Overview  pages on Xeno-Canto.  Available from the left frame menu, these pages offer a summary of number of species sound recordings, photos, range maps and sonogram images.   See this page, for example:

Species Overview page for the Red-necked Woodpecker

WikiAves - A Enciclopédia das Aves do Brasil

WikiAves Encyclopedia of Brazilian Birds is an amazing resource of Campephilus descriptive information, photos and sounds.   WikiAves represents the four species of Campephilus woodpeckers, listed below, that can be found in Brazil.

The photographs that I have seen in WikiAves are among the most spectacular ones that I've seen anywhere.

In English and Portuguese, the four species of Campephilus in WikiAves are:

• Cream-backed Woodpecker         Pica-pau-de-barriga-preta

• Crimson-crested Woodpecker      Pica-pau-de-topete-vermelho
  

• Red-necked Woodpecker             Pica-pau-de-barriga-vermelha 

• Robust Woodpecker                    Pica-pau-rei
  

   

Although the entry on the Cream-backed Woodpecker is rather slim (as of this posting) the others have a wealth of descriptive information.  And you'll find sounds and photos for all of them.  You can cut and paste the Portuguese text into your favorite web-based translator to understand the entries.

SIB - Parques Nacionales - Sistema de Información sobre Biodiversidad

There are 4 species of Campephilus that are native to Argentina which contain interesting and detailed profiles (en Español) along with dramatic illustrations of each species, except the Robust Woodpecker, at the SIB - Parques Nacionales - Sistema de Información sobre Biodiversidad site.  Be a bit patient to allow this site to load.

In English and with their Spanish names, the four species of Campephilus at the SIB site are:

1. Crimson-crested Woodpecker     Carpintero garganta negra

          Carpintero grande

2. Cream-backed Woodpecker     Carpintero lomo blanco

3. Magellanic Woodpecker     Carpintero gigante     Carpintero negro patagónico

          Carpintero patagónico

4. Robust Woodpecker     Carpintero grande

SORA Searchable Ornithological Research Archive

Originally posted 4/10/10 - backdated to organize posts by topic.

This posts highlights the extraordinary SORA project, the source of an incredible array of ornithological journal articles.  The SORA project is described as follows at the site:

The SORA project is an open access electronic journal archive and is the product of a collaboration between the American Ornithologists Union, the Cooper Ornithological Society, the Association of Field Ornithologists, the Wilson Ornithological Society and the University of New Mexico libraries and IT department. 

Here is the link to SORA.

Of course, there are many interesting articles on Campephilus woodpeckers within SORA.  For example, searching for the word "guayaquil" by keyword quickly retrieves this full-text article from within SORA:

WILLIAMS

First Description of the Nest, Eggs and Nestling of the Guayaquil Woodpecker (Campephilus [Phloeoceastes] Gayaquilensis) (Wilson Bulletin: Vol. 92, No. 4, October-December, 1980)

Here is an excerpt from that article:

The nest cavity was in the main trunk about 6 m above the ground. Its irregularly shaped entrance was large enough (about 75 x 100 mm) to admit my hand, and it was about 30 cm deep. I could not reach the cavity’s bottom or its contents, but using a mirror, I saw 1 egg and 1 newly-hatched young. The shell of the hatched egg was still in the nest. The eggs were white and immaculate-typical large woodpecker eggs. The nestling was making weak chirping sounds. Its eyes were closed, and it appeared naked; however, in the dim light of the cavity, sparse down probably would not have been obvious. It had a conspicuous eggtooth. I visited this nest again at 13:50. After approaching within 6-8 m of the female at the cavity entrance, I made several color transparencies (Frontispiece). I never saw more than 1 adult at this site.

I am amazed at how little still is known of the breeding and behavior of the Campephilus woodpeckers.

Cream-backed Woodpecker

 Originally posted 3/20/2010 - backdated to organize posts by topic.

Some of the best woodpecker photos (Campephilus and others) that you will ever find are at a site called PicidPics, like this fantastic photo of a male Cream-backed Woodpecker. 

PicidPics features photos of picids, including woodpeckers, piculets and wrynecks by Martjan Lammertink and Julio Pérez Cañestro.  The site also features photos of woodpecker researchers in the field and photos of secondary cavity users.

Visit PicidPics here

Photo © Martjan Lammertink, posted here with permission.

This photo shows the bird's pale creamy mantle in excellent detail.  The male has a bright red head with black and white marks at the lower rear edge of its ear coverts.   Like some Campephilus relatives, the Cream-backed Woodpecker has a striking chisel-shaped, ivory-colored bill.

You can also see here the long toe that the large Campephilus woodpeckers extend to their side to secure their stance against a tree.  It's a good brace against gravity!  You'd probably extend your arms out to either side like this if you found yourself braced against a cliff on a narrow ledge.

The Cream-backed Woodpecker inhabits subtropical and dry tropical forests in south central South America in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.  Unlike several of its close relatives, this species occurs in savannas, and it can be observed visiting isolated trees in open areas.