Researchers Find the Avian Elvis
There have been multiple sightings of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker.
by Amy K. Hooper -
Posted: April 30, 2005
News and Notes
Multiple sightings of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas have convinced ornithological experts that the long-thought-extinct species with the 3-foot wingspan still lives in America's Southern bayous, oxbow lakes and bottomland forests.
The unexpected announcement in late April capped a year-long search for conclusive proof of the Lord God Bird, the object of many rumors and previous searches, since its last confirmed sighting in the United States in 1944.
Led by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and The Nature Conservancy, the secret and stealthy search began in February 2004 after a kayaker named Gene Sparling reported seeing an unusual woodpecker in Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Arkansas. Sparling's tale came to the attention of Tim Gallagher, editor of Cornell's Living Bird magazine, who spoke with Sparling and asked a colleague, Bobby Ray Harrison, to do likewise. Gallagher and Harrison believed that Sparling's woodpecker was an Ivory-bill, and they joined the kayaker to explore the forest.
On their second day in the canoe, Feb. 27, Gallagher and Harrison saw an Ivory-bill fly in front of them but could not photograph or record the awesome bird. They continued searching for days but did not see another woodpecker of the same size with the distinctive black-and-white wing pattern.
As Frank Gill of the National Audubon Society said, "It is kind of like finding Elvis."
When Gallagher returned to Cornell in New York, he described the sighting to the director, Dr. John Fitzpatrick, who agreed that searching for and studying Ivory-bills would be the lab's No. 1 priority. That goal led to the Big Woods Conservation Partnership with Cornell, The Nature Conservancy's Arkansas chapter, universities, government agencies and private companies.
Under a code of silence, the search team eventually included more than 50 employees, volunteers and contractors in the field during two search seasons: March to May 2004 and December 2004 to April 2005. They quietly and meticulously covered sections of Cache River and White River NWRs by canoe, by foot and by acoustic recording units.
Among the team were birders with connections to WildBird, the least of which being Gallagher, who helped to launch the magazine in 1987 and worked on staff for a few years, and Harrison, who contributed photographs for many years. Former members of the magazine's award-winning Great Texas Birding Classic teams also participated in the search, such as Andy Farnsworth, Marshall Iliff and Mike Andersen.
One search member, John Puschock, worked on the White River crew for more than four months, scouting for areas that the rest of the crew could explore intensively. "I was looking for good habitat, or at least what we thought might be good habitat," he said. "I relied on [James] Tanner's descriptions of Ivory-billed habitat [in Louisiana's Singer Tract], but it's difficult to know how representative his study site was. While you can be pretty sure that Ivory-billeds prefer large areas of old-growth forest, we don't know what other habitats they can tolerate."
While working at least 45 hours a week in the swamp, Puschock—a wildlife biologist and a tour guide for Bird Treks—walked transects and looked for signs of Ivory-bill activity: large cavities in the trees and scaled bark, where the woodpeckers would peel the tree bark to look for wood-boring insects. On his days off, he went to Bayou de View in Cache River NWR and "paddled around the hot zone, hoping to see the bird, which didn't happen. I'm sure that seeing the bird would be the same as seeing a ghost or an alien getting out of a space ship."
Despite the lack of a personal sighting, Puschock started every day thinking that he was going to find an Ivory-billed. "The funny thing was how easily I accepted that I was actually looking for Ivory-billeds. It was just what we did; it was our job, though on the bad days, it seemed absurd. On those days, you would think to yourself, 'What am I doing here?'"
Puschock said he went through cycles of pessimism and optimism. The excitement began when he heard about the project from Cornell's Dr. Fitzpatrick. "I couldn't sleep for three nights," he said. "The funny thing is that I really wasn't surprised. I was a cautious believer of [David] Kulivan's report from Pearl River [Wildlife Management Area in Louisiana in 1999]. The biggest surprise wasn't that the Ivory-billed wasn't extinct; it was that the bird was in Arkansas, not Louisiana."
Now that he's home and the entire world knows about the rediscovery, Puschock says it was an honor to have been part of the search. "The combination of the secrecy and media interest made it feel like you were a combination of a CIA operative and rock star. Well, that's an exaggeration, but it's the closest you're going to get as a wildlife biologist."
The motley crew of searchers made the work more fun, Puschock said. "Everyone on the White River crew got along extremely well, and the people of Arkansas are the friendliest people I've met."
The two search seasons yielded video footage, multiple eye-witness sightings and audio recordings of the species" double rap, BAM-bam. Puschock said the next big excitement would be the discovery of a nest.
With the announcement that North America's largest woodpecker still lives, the federal government pledged $10 million dollars to creating a Corridor of Hope Cooperative Conservation Plan. The money will go toward law enforcement, conservation easements, safe-harbor agreements and conservation reserves. The proposed federal funds match the amount of money raised by the Big Woods Conservation Partnership.
A major component of the partnership has been the purchase of land that might be Ivory-bill habitat. The Nature Conservancy's Arkansas chapter began acquiring land soon after the search began in March 2004, and the partnership plans to conserve and to restore 200,000 more acres of the swamp ecosystem.
Tim Barksdale of Birdman Productions is a member of the partnership and serves as the search's lead digital cinematographer. He recently wrote, "In 100 years, we will have thousands of acres of amazing ivory-bill habitat. This is not about whether you and I ever get to see this bird. This is about whether we can do things to encourage a species to survive. Our grandchildren will hopefully appreciate what we are doing now."
To participate in the habitat conservation effort, donate via mail to The Nature Conservancy Attn: Treasury, 4245 N. Fairfax Drive Suite 100, Arlington VA 22203; via the phone at 800-628-6860; or online at www.nature.org/ivorybill/help.
—A.K.H.
It Began with a Book
Tim Gallagher—former associate, managing and contributing editor of WildBird—instigated the biggest-ever conservation news of the birding world. The current editor of Living Bird, the quarterly magazine produced by Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, has felt passionate about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker since the early 1970s and didn't let the lack of confirmed recent sightings diminish his interest.
News about David Kulivan's sighting in Louisiana's Pearl River Wildlife Management Area in 1999 confirmed Gallagher's faith in the species' existence. "According to his report, he saw not one but two of these birds, a male and a female," Gallagher said. "It was like a dream come true. Anything seemed possible. It was all the more crushing when no signs of the bird were found during subsequent searches [including the Zeiss Sports Optics-sponsored search in 2002]."
Gallagher didn't want to give up on that dream, and he started interviewing people across the South who'd reportedly seen Ivory-bills. "Many of them were quite convincing," he said, "so I started following up on their reports—sometimes alone, more often with my colleague, Bobby Harrison."
The research morphed into a book project in 2001, and he learned of Gene Sparling's sighting six days after the kayaker saw the woodpecker in Arkansas' Cache River National Wildlife Refuge on Feb. 11, 2004. "Less than three weeks earlier, I had been in the White River National Wildlife Refuge, following up on another sighting made in March 2003 by Mary Scott, a California birder who now lives in Arizona. Gene had his sighting less than 50 miles from Mary's, so I took it very seriously."
Gallagher spoke with Sparling for almost an hour and believed everything that the naturalist said. Harrison also believed Sparling. "A few days later, we were paddling down the bayou with him," Gallagher said. "We planned to spend a week canoeing the length of the bayou. On the second day, we had our sighting. This was the first time since 1944 that two qualified observers had seen an Ivory-bill at the same time in the United States."
Gallagher was "absolutely stunned" when the bird flew right in front of them: "We saw the characteristic wing pattern, with brilliant white going all the way to the trailing edge of the secondaries and inner primaries. I never thought for an instant that I didn't believe my eyes. It was all too real."
The enormity of the rediscovery still amazes Gallagher. "It hasn't completely sunk in how historic this was," he said. "In some ways, I'm still in a state of shock 14 months later."
Birders who want to participate in this historic event need to sit tight, Gallagher said. "As far as visiting the areas where the bird was seen, access is being strictly managed for now," he said. "There are plans to erect public observation towers in a few places, and you may have as good or even better a chance of seeing an Ivory-bill from a tower than you would paddling through the dense swamp forest."
For a book that's thick with more details about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and the recent rediscovery that resulted from Gallagher's passion for the species, pick up The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Houghton Mifflin Co., 2005).
—A.K.H.
This article was first published in the July/August 2005 issue of WildBird.