ey spend much of their time hitching themselves up tree branches and trunks in typical woodpecker fashion, searching for insects. At about midday there is a lull in activity. Occasionally they hop along on the ground to forage. Flight is graceful and direct; short flights are often accomplished in single swoops and longer flights are powered by steady wingbeats. When ivory-billed woodpeckers must travel a great distance they fly above the canopy. In late afternoon these birds return to their roost trees. They enter their roost cavities around dusk.
Ivory-billed woodpeckers are rarely found in large groups; the most ever observed together was 11 individuals. Small groups of three or four birds have been seen feeding in the same vicinity. Each mated pair has its own home range, but they are not territorial. They are not known to be aggressive toward one another, although they may scold intruding conspecifics. Group size and tolerance of other individuals may be related to habitat quality.
Ivory-billed woodpeckers seem to be sedentary, but some have suggested that they are nomadic, moving around to take advantage of dead trees left over from recent disturbance. (Jackson, 2002)
Home ranges are quite large; individuals in the U.S. have been observed traveling up to 4 km away from their nests. Taking this distance as the radius of a circle, the total home range size is about 50 square kilometers. Lamb (1958) calculated an even larger home range size for ivory-billed woodpeckers in Cuba, about 65 square kilometers. The fact that these woodpeckers have such large home ranges helps to explain why they require such large tracts of continuous forest in order to survive. (Jackson, 2002; Lamb, 1958)
Ivory-billed woodpeckers, like most birds, perceive their environment through visual, auditory, tactile, and chemical means. The relative acuteness of ivory-billed woodpeckers' senses is unknown, but presumably they have good vision and hearing as they use auditory and visual signals to communicate with one another. They have a distinctive call note, "kent", which is often described as sounding similar to a note from a tin trumpet or a New Year's Eve party horn. When pairs are together they utter somewhat softer call notes, and when more than two are together they engage in soft chatter or sometimes a chorus of long, upslurred notes. Family members trade call notes back and forth throughout the day as they forage, growing quiet towards evening. Ivory-billed woodpeckers also communicate by drumming their heavy bills on tree surfaces. Their distinctive drum sound is a double rap, the first rap slightly louder than the second, so that it sounds like the second is an echo of the first. Finally, the bright red crest of a male ivory-billed woodpecker sends a clear visual signal, and no doubt serves a communicatory function, but its exact purpose has not been studied. (Jackson, 2002)
Ivory-billed woodpeckers feed on large beetle larvae, which they find by stripping away the bark of dead or dying trees. Occasionally, they forage for insects on the ground in recently burned areas or in fallen logs. Insects consumed belong to the families Cerambycidae, Buprestidae, Elateridae, Scolytidae, Melasidae, and also include arboreal termites (Isoptera). However, insects only make up about half the diet; in addition, ivory-billed woodpeckers eat berries, nuts and seeds, including cherries, southern magnolia fruits and seeds, pecan nuts, hickory nuts, poison ivy seeds, grapes, persimmons, hackberries, and possibly acorns. (Jackson, 2002)
No one has ever recorded predation on ivory-billed woodpeckers, except for that by humans. Potential predators include raccoons, rat snakes, great horned owls, barred owls, Cuban crows, American crows, red-shouldered hawks, Cooper's hawks, and Stygian owls. There is a report of a pair of ivory-billed woodpeckers chasing a Cooper's hawk away from their nest while scolding it, and another report of a female ivory-billed woodpecker giving a warning call and flying closer to her fledgling when a red-shouldered hawk appeared in t