Lewis’s Woodpecker

Lewis’s Description

On 27 May 1806, while the expedition was camped in the vicinity of modern Kamiah, Idaho, on the Clearwater River, biding their time until they could take to the snow-choked Indian trail across the Bitterroot Mountains, Lewis described a bird that was “new to science,” with his typical mixture of minute detail and genuine admiration:

The Black woodpecker which I have frequently mentioned and which is found in most parts of the roky Mountains as well as the Western and S. W. Mountains, I had never an opportunity of examining untill a few days since when we killed and preserved several of them. This bird is about the size of the lark woodpecker or the turtle dove, tho’ it’s wings are longer than either of those birds.

The beak is black, one inch long, reather wide at the base, somewhat curved, and sharply pointed; the chaps are of equal length. Around the base of the beak including the eye and a small part of the throat is of a fine crimson red. The neck and as low as the croop in front is of an iron grey. The belly and breast is a curious mixture of white and blood red which has much the appearance of having been artificially painted or stained of that colour. The red reather predominates.

The top of the head back, sides, upper surface of the wings and tail are black, with a glossey tint of green in a certain exposure to the light. The under side of the wings and tail are of a sooty black. It has ten feathers in the tail, sharply pointed, and those in the centre reather longest, being 2-1/2 inches in length. The tongue is barbed, pointed, and of an elastic cartelaginous substance. The eye is moderately large, puple black and iris of a dark yellowish brown.

This bird in it’s actions when flying resembles the small redheaded woodpecker common to the Atlantic states; its note also somewhat resembles that bird. The pointed tail seems to assist it in seting with more eas or retaining &its resting position against the perpendicular side of a tree. The legs and feet are black and covered with wide imbricated [overlapping] scales. It has four toes on each foot of which two are in rear and two in front; the nails are much curved long and remarkably keen or sharply pointed. It feeds on bugs worms and a variety of insects.

Lewis’s Specimen

Lewis carried the specimens home and gave one to Charles Willson Peale for his museum in Philadelphia. There it was studied by the pioneer American ornithologist, Alexander Wilson (1766-1813), who made a drawing from it, and gave the bird its common name and its first scientific name, Picus torquatus (PIE-kus tor-KWA-tus), Latin for “woodpecker with a necklace.” The British zoologist William Swainson (1789-1855) reclassified it in a new genus in 1831,^[2]During his preparations for the expedition in Philadelphia, in the winter and spring of 1803, Lewis had learned the rudiments of taxidermy from Benjamin Smith Barton. so modern birdwatchers know it as Melanerpes lewis (mel-an-ER-peez), literally “Lewis’s black creeper.