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Primary Source of the Month

"Largest White Bill’d Woodpecker," by Mark Catesby, in Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, London England, 1731–1734. Special Collections, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
"Largest White Bill’d Woodpecker," by Mark Catesby, in Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, London England, 1731–1734. Special Collections, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

After two scientific trips to North America and the Caribbean in 1712 and 1722, English naturalist Mark Catesby (ca. 1682–1749) created his two-volume work, The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands. Published in sections between 1731 and 1743, it was the first major report of its kind on the natural history of the British colonies. In 1733, Catesby was accepted as a member of the Royal Society of London, an organization created in 1660 to promote scientific discussion in England.

Catesby engraved all but two of the 220 prints in The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands. The prints illustrate a wide variety of plants, mammals, birds, fish, insects, and reptiles that Catesby encountered during his travels. Each print also included text, in both French and English, describing the creatures’ physical characteristics, behavior, and eating habits—all information of great interest to scientists who had never before seen these species.

The following is Catesby’s descriptive text for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (above):

WEIGHS twenty ounces; about the size, or somewhat larger than a Crow. The bill is white as ivory, three inches long, and channelled from the basis to the point: the iris of the eye yellow: the hind part of the head adorned with a large peaked crest of scarlet feathers: a crooked white stripe runs from the eye on each side the neck, towards the wing: the lower part of the back and wings (except the large quill feathers) are white, all the rest of the Bird is black.
The bills of these Birds are much valued by the Canada Indians, who make coronets of them for their Princes and great warriers, by fixing them round a wreath, with their points outward. The Northern Indians, having none of these Birds in their cold country, purchase them of the Southern people at the price of two, and sometimes three buck-skins a bill.
These Birds subsist chiefly on Ants, Wood-worms, and other Insects, which they hew out of rotten trees, Nature having so formed their bills, that in an hour or two they will raise a bushel of chips; for which the Spaniards call them Carpenteros.

[Additional Notes: 1) The Ivory-billed Woodpecker was thought to have gone extinct sometime in the mid-1900s. In April 2005, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society announced the possible rediscovery of at least one Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Unfortunately, the lack of further confirmed sightings has dampened hopes that the bird had somehow avoided extinction. 2) Additional images from Catesby’s The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, are available at the University of Copenhagen Library Web site.]


Source: This article was written by Jodi Norman, Department of Education Outreach, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.