I will tell you a little bit about this sad case. 

There are a few known facts about the ivory billed woodpecker. Its scientific name is Camephilus principalis.

My animal is from the bird family. It is a vertebrate animal. The region in which it was found in was the southeastern and gulf coast states of the United States, including North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee.

The ivory billed woodpecker is a pretty bird. The ivory billed woodpecker has a white stripe from the bill to the sides of its' neck.  On its wings are large white patches. Where it gets its name from is its ivory white colored bill. It also has yellow eyes. The male has a red-colored crest and the female has a black crest.  It is 21 inches tall and weighs 20 ounces. 

The ivory billed woodpecker's habitat has long been destroyed. It used to live in mature lowland hardwood forest that had not been disturbed by humans. They needed about ten square miles per pair of miles.  

The ivory billed woodpecker had a simple diet. It consisted of certain wood-boring beetle larvae. It also ate insects, grubs, worms, and sometimes fruits, nuts, and seed. 

The family life of the ivory billed woodpecker has some similarities to the human family. They have a mate for life. They are known to travel and  stay together. They take care of their young together from the time the eggs are laid until a few weeks after the young birds can fly. The birds mate every year between January and May. They lay three eggs, which both parents will sit on, until they hatch. Man was not kinds to this bird. 

Man began cutting down the mature hardwoods in the 1800's. These birds could not survive in new forests. Without the ivory billed woodpecker, there is not the spreading of seeds done by this bird and there has been a disruption in the natural food chain. 

The ivory billed woodpecker made the Endangered Species list on March 11, 1967, which was too late to make a plan since its' habitat had already been destroyed. The last sighting of an ivory billed woodpecker was in 1972. If we had known that the ivory billed woodpecker was endangered earlier, we could have had a plan that would have possibly saved it. Instead of cutting down trees in the mature forests we could have recycled more. Possibly we could have captured some ivory billed woodpeckers and set them free in other mature forests.  

Written by / geschreven door : Brice

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