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ivory-billed woodpecker, common name for the largest of the North American woodpeckers, Campephilus principalis. Believed since 1952 to be nearing extinction, the last known members of this species were reported from the deepest forests of NW Florida and central Louisiana. A shiny blue-black in color with extensive white markings on its wings and neck, this bird is distinguished by its pure white bill and by a prominent top crest, red in the male and black in the female. A true woodpecker, it has a strong and straight chisellike bill and a long, mobile, hard-tipped, sticky tongue. It measures from 18 to 20 in. (46–51 cm) in length, with short legs and feet ending in large, curved claws. The ivory-bill deposits from three to five glossy white eggs per clutch in an unlined hole, preferably drilled in a cypress tree. Of its reproductive habits little more than this is known. The disappearance of the ivory-bills may be blamed on the cutting and eventual disappearance of the trees in which they lived. It is thought that a few ivory-bills are surviving today in the forests of the Gulf Coast of North America and in Cuba. Ivory-billed woodpeckers are classified in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, class Aves, order Piciformes, family Picidae.
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