For nine days in mid-April I was in Louisiana, looking for Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. No, we didn’t see or hear anything that even raised a thin possibility.
Four friends and I hiked in four national wildlife refuges running up the eastern side of the state to the Arkansas border. What we did see was thousands and thousands of acres of habitat suitable for the bird. Much of it is just plain inaccessible on foot or by canoe or kayak. A slow fly-over, say by hot-air balloon or an ultra-light aircraft would offer limited visual access, but that’s about it. The woodpeckers are in there, but it’s just rare good fortune that gives someone a sighting.
This was my fourth trip to Louisiana to hike and watch and hope. How much hope can one have? One of my companions on this trip, John Trochet, a California resident, began seriously looking for the bird in 1974, when he was 23 years old. He finally saw an Ivory-billed in 2005. That’s 31 years of hope. John saw the bird in Arkansas in the same area as the sightings by the team from Cornell University. John had a second sighting in 2007 in Florida.
The Arkansas sighting was head-on, a bird clinging to a tree about 100 feet in front of him, full view. He had five seconds to watch before it flew. It flew directly over him, a gift from the woodpecker gods.
Believing people is always a question when it comes to this woodpecker. No one has yet offered clear photographic evidence of the bird’s existence. I believe John. He is curator of the natural history museum at the University of California Davis. His specialty is birds. He is a knowledgeable professional. I believe him. Two others in our party also have seen the bird on other occasions. I believe them too.
We had excellent weather in Louisiana in mid-February, sunny days in the 60s and 70s, two days touching 80 degrees. Conditions were perfect. It was an enjoyable trip.
I carried a camera throughout our time in the woods. So did John. The opportunity to get a good photo is much smaller than the chance to see the bird. The habit of Ivory-billeds is to flush early, at a distance, and usually in heavily wooded terrain. We spent some time at bridges crossing rivers and bayous, expanses of water with wooded shores, good places to see a bird fly from one side to another. I estimated I would have five or six seconds at the most to put the bird in the camera view finder, focus, and shoot. I tried it with Pileated Woodpeckers and crows. I had no success at all.
It’s beautiful country, though, for the most part. Some of trees back in the swamps are four feet in diameter. Trees routinely topped 100 feet in height. There was no leaf cover at this time of year, which is one reason to choose February for a search. (Few mosquitoes in February is another reason, a very good one.) Those areas that did not offer post-card scenery were river-bottom woods that have been flooded so heavily and so often that there is no under story growth.
In one woods we saw a mark on a tree indicating the water level in a 1991 flood. It was about 30 feet above ground. And it’s really flat ground. You’d think water 30 feet deep would stretch all the way to the Gulf.
We saw a few warbler species that will be here in 10 weeks or so. We saw a few vireos, some Brown Creepers, flocks of Rusty Blackbirds, and many, many woodpeckers of the other resident species, but only a fly-away look at a single Red-cockaded Woodpecker. We saw nest trees for that woodpecker, all clearly marked with painted white bands, but could not located more than one foraging bird.
A presentation covering the discovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas in 2005 in available on-line at
Rediscovery of the Ivory-billed WoodpeckerIn it, John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, discusses the Arkansas project, and also reviews history of the bird. There are photos and movies taken in April 1935 of birds studied by Jim Tanner and his team. Tanner’s study of six pairs of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers is the significant study of these birds. You will see photos and the movies during the first 20 minutes of this program. It’s a fascinating program, and very convincing, certainly to someone who is a believer. The presentation was made at a gathering of the American Ornithologists’ Union at the University of California Santa Barbara.
Wingnut with Jim Williams
