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In Texas, a man claims to see the mysterious black-and-white woodpecker a few times a week on his land near an airport in Longview. A woman in North Carolina says one regularly visits bird feeders at her home. Another insists she encountered it nearly 20 years ago in Florida. “I KNOW what I saw, and I’m thrilled to have seen him,” she wrote in July to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The federal agency isn’t entirely convinced. In late 2021, the U.S. government sparked a fierce flap in ornithological circles when it said the ivory-billed woodpecker—a majestic bird with...

A small band of searchers rousts itself each morning from a secret camp deep in the woods of a forgotten northwest Florida swamp. They have endured freezing nights, foul drinking water, long stints without showers and an outhouse with only one wall, all in a search for a ghostly creature that may not even exist. They are on a quest to find and photograph an ivory-billed woodpecker to show the world the bird is not extinct. They have invited me along for a two-day glimpse into a mission that is as inspiring as it is mundane. In the past few...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - A federal judge halted a $320 million irrigation project Thursday for fear it could disturb the habitat of a woodpecker that may or may not be extinct. The dispute involves the ivory-billed woodpecker. The last confirmed sighting of the bird in North America was in 1944, and scientists had thought the species was extinct until 2004, when a kayaker claimed to have spotted one in the area. But scientists have been unable to confirm the sighting. Still, U.S. District Judge William R. Wilson said that for purposes of the lawsuit brought by environmental groups, he had...

Doubts cast on superstar woodpecker's return 12:36 13 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Bob Holmes The apparent rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker in 2005 – hailed as one of the great conservation triumphs of recent times – may be merely a case of mistaken identity, according to a new study. In April 2005, researchers led by John Fitzpatrick at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York, announced in the journal Science that the woodpecker, believed extinct for 60 years, had been seen alive in the swamps of eastern Arkansas, US. And they had a video of the bird...

As reported around the world, the ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), last known to exist in 1944, was sighted in eastern Arkansas in 2004. The sighting prompted a massive (and secret) follow-up search in 2005 of a sixteen-square-mile area of Arkansas forest. When the bird was confirmed to exist, the discovery spawned international headlines, an article in the journal Science, and a book titled The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. While the search for additional evidence of the woodpecker continues, the investigation is instructive for what it did not find: the alleged and elusive Bigfoot. The...

A hunting lodge with antler chandeliers and stuffed ducks on the walls seems a strange place to celebrate the comeback of the ivory-billed woodpecker, but wildlife officials are doing exactly that. They credit hunters in particular with helping bring the rare bird back from presumed extinction in the Big Woods section of Arkansas. "The people of Arkansas, the hunting and fishing community, conserved these woods," Scott Simon of The Nature Conservancy told reporters on Monday at the Mallard Pointe Lodge, where a coalition of environmentalists, academics and wildlife officials rejoiced in woodpecker's return to the living. Simon said hunters and...

Published: August 2, 2005 The phoenix had nothing on the ivory-billed woodpecker. It is hard to keep track of how many times this near-mythic bird, the largest American woodpecker and a poignant symbol of extinction and disappearing forests, has been lost and then found. Now it is found again. Even the most skeptical ornithologists now agree. They say that newly presented evidence shows that at least two of the birds are living in Arkansas.

Bird in question was thought to be extinct Three biologists are questioning the evidence used by a team of bird experts who made the electrifying claim in April that they had sighted an ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird presumed to have vanished from the United States more than 60 years ago, in the swampy forests of southeastern Arkansas. If the challenge holds up, it would not only undermine a scientific triumph -- the rediscovery of a resplendent bird that had been exhaustively sought for years -- but also significant new conservation expenditures in the region. The paper questioning the discovery has...

SIDE EFFECTS Emily Dickinson was right: hope is the thing with feathers. What she didn't know was that it lives in an Arkansas swamp and has a big ivory bill. On Thursday, the day that scientists announced the first confirmed sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker in 60 years, I went for a short paddle in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, where the bird was seen. I was with four other people, two from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which had made a major effort to confirm the sighting, and two from the Nature Conservancy, which has been buying land...

CLARENDON, Ark. - About one-quarter of the downtown shops are boarded up. The two factories - a steel basket manufacturer and a shoe company - fled for Mexico about four years ago. Many of the children leave town after graduation. But suddenly there is hope, talk of new motels being built, and a flock of newly printed T-shirts for sale. And the kids, at least the much younger kids, are showing civic pride with a strange multi-colored, moussed-up $25 "woodpecker haircut." And it's all thanks to a bird. Not just any bird, mind you, but an ivory-billed woodpecker. It's a...

BILLINGS, Mont. — Death’s come knocking a last time for the splendid ivory-billed woodpecker and 22 more birds, fish and other species: The U.S. government on Wednesday declared them extinct. It’s a rare move for wildlife officials to give up hope on a plant or animal, but government scientists say they’ve exhausted to find these 23. And they warn climate change, on top of other pressures, could make such disappearances more common as a warming planet adds to the dangers facing imperiled plants and wildlife. The factors behind the disappearances vary — too much development, water pollution, logging, competition from...

Dr. Michael Collins, Naval Research Laboratory scientist and bird watcher, has published an article titled "Putative audio recordings of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis)" which appears in the March issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. The audio recordings were captured in two videos of birds with characteristics consistent with the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. This footage was obtained near the Pearl River in Louisiana, where there is a history of unconfirmed reports of this species. During five years of fieldwork, Collins had ten sightings and also heard the characteristic "kent" calls of this species on two occasions. Scientists...

BRINKLEY, Ark., April 28 - The ivory-billed woodpecker, a magnificent bird long given up for extinct, has been sighted in the cypress and tupelo swamp of the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge here in Arkansas, scientists announced Thursday. Bird experts, government agencies and conservation organizations involved kept the discovery secret for more than a year, while they worked to confirm the discovery and protect the bird's territory. Their announcement on Thursday brought rejoicing among birdwatchers, for whom the ivory bill has long been a holy grail - a creature that has been called the Lord God bird, apparently because that...

Multiple sightings, video footage show bird survives in vast forested areas Click here to view a video news release. BRINKLEY, Ark. - Long believed to be extinct, a magnificent bird - the ivory-billed woodpecker - has been rediscovered in the Big Woods of eastern Arkansas. More than 60 years after the last confirmed sighting of the species in the United States, a research team today announced that at least one male ivory-bill still survives in vast areas of bottomland swamp forest. Published in the journal Science on its Science Express Web site (April 28, 2005), the findings include multiple sightings...

Birders excited about woodpecker sightings Tuesday, September 26, 2006 By BILL FINCH Environment Editor Auburn University researchers published evidence today of what some are describing as an ivory-bill woodpecker "Shangri-La" in the Florida Panhandle, a couple of hours east of Mobile. Researchers said they've had 13 sightings of the ivory bill, long thought to be extinct, and have recorded some 300 distinctive calls and sounds associated with the giant woodpecker, the largest in the United States and a virtual Holy Grail for many birders. The last clear photographs of the bird -- and uncontested proof of its existence -- date...

Video Proof Disputed in Case of Ivory Bill The writer of a field guide to North American birds and three academic colleagues have challenged the videotape evidence offered as proof of the existence of an ivory-billed woodpecker in Arkansas' Big Woods region. Long believed to be extinct, the bird made headlines around the world last April when scientists announced that they had spotted it several times and caught it on film. But David Sibley and his team argue that the low-quality video shows the more common pileated woodpecker, not the ivory-bill, preparing to take flight from a tupelo tree and...

BRINKLEY, Ark. - Each morning, Sara Barker wakes before dawn, covers herself with camouflage and makes sure she has her compass before heading into the eastern Arkansas swamps. Her quest: the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker. Dozens of birders have flocked to the wildlife refuges of the Arkansas Delta to follow up on a kayaker's 2004 sighting of a bird so rare it was thought to have become extinct. They hope to obtain a clear video or picture of the bird and then study its behavior. Barker and fellow scientists from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology plan to comb thousands of acres...