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Finding the Ivory-billed Woodpecker

Read a first-hand account from one of the two men who re-discovered North America’s rarest bird.

“What do you think of this one?” This was the email question I received from Tim Gallagher, director of publications and editor of Living Bird magazine at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. He had forwarded a message he had received from Mary Scott, fellow searcher for the ivory-billed woodpecker. This was just one of many emails he had sent on the subject of ivorybills.

Tim and I have been friends for almost 20 years. We had known each other about 15 years and served on the board of the North America Nature Photographers Association before we discovered that we both had a longtime passion for the ivory-billed woodpecker.

We had been interested in the “ghost bird” for more than 30 years, and through those years we had been collecting material on its natural history, and, of course, recent sightings. We had both obtained copies of James Tanner’s research report on the ivorybill when we were in our late teens, and I had begun to search in earnest by 1994. As a college professor I would use school breaks to tromp through southern swamps, mired to my knees, looking for the ivorybill. It was my holy grail.

Tim and I had, unbeknownst to each other, spent countless hours in libraries digging through old journals and books to find even the most minuscule tidbit about the ivorybill. We had both begun to theorize on why the ivory-billed woodpecker could still exist. We spoke of how forests have continued to improve since the 1940s and how habitat was getting better every year. We were both convinced that the ivorybill could have made it through what Tim calls “the bottleneck” - a period of maximum degradation of southern forest. We believed that the bird’s population could actually be growing, which would account for the increasing number of credible reports each year.

After we discovered that we had both been researching the bird and going into the field to search for it, we decided to join forces. We began to exchange ideas on the ivorybill’s existence and on why the birds are occasionally seen, but never found again when groups of searchers come to investigate. We speculated on why no one who had claimed to see an ivorybill had taken a photograph or captured a video. We also realized that the ivory-billed woodpecker is far from being a well-studied species. Little is known of the bird’s natural history outside of Tanner’s monumental work on the species between 1937 and 1939. His work is the only scientific study of the ivorybill, and that study included only six pairs of birds in an area that had not been hunted for almost 10 years.

We began to travel together and to interview people who had actually seen ivory-billeds. Tim interviewed ornithologists Richard Pough and John Dennis; Nancy Tanner, widow of Dr. James Tanner; bird artist Don Eckelberry; and Louisiana game warden Jesse Laird. He spoke with elderly Cajuns of south Louisiana and aged woodsmen who survived off the southern swamps, who had known the ghost bird in their youth. Together we interviewed Fielding Lewis, a dog trainer who, in 1971, took some disputed photographs of an ivory-billed in southern Louisiana. We were documenting sightings less than a decade old, others 20 or 30 years old, some even older. The stories were always amazing; some people had no doubt seen ivorybills, whereas others had undoubtedly misidentified the smaller pileated woodpecker. The key was to let each person tell his or her story, whether it was about the ivorybill or the pileated. The stories were flavored with the attitudes and verbiage of the Old South and always fascinating to hear.

With Tim working at the Lab of Ornithology, the word got out that he was interested in ivorybill sightings, and it didn’t take long for his phone to start ringing off the hook. Most reports were of pileated woodpeckers that the observer had misidentified. But one was too good to be true.

Gene Sparling, a kayaker from Hot Springs, Arkansas, was drifting down a bayou in eastern Arkansas when he saw what he described as a “super-big pileated with white on its back.” I emailed Tim and said, “I’ve got to talk to this guy; I’m going to try to get a number for him.” Within an hour and a half I received a call from Tim, who said, “I found the guy and just got off the phone - I believe he actually saw an ivorybill. I told him you would be calling - here’s his number.”

As soon as I was off the phone with Tim, I gave Gene a call. I introduced myself, and he seemed surprised that I had called so quickly. Trying to contain the excitement in my voice I said, “I understand you saw something interesting in the swamp.” In a deep, long, drawn-out Arkansan voice he replied, “Well, I’m not sure what I saw.” Then he began to tell his story. He was floating down the bayou when a large woodpecker passed overhead and landed about 10 feet up on the side of a cypress tree. The bird suddenly realized that he had landed near a human and began moving around the tree in a nervous, jerky motion:

The back had a big white patch, but it was a dirty white - seemed to have a yellow tinge to it. The head was really strange, a big whitish bill and a pointed topknot that looked real cartoonish. After it saw me it moved around the tree in jerky movements, like it was really nervous. After moving around the trunk, it hitched up the tree and flew off. When it flew, I noticed that the white on the wings was in the wrong place and there was too much white for a pileated woodpecker.

“It sounds to me like you saw an ivory-billed woodpecker,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “I’m not sure, but I hope so.”

After speaking with Gene, I called Tim. “I believe this guy saw an ivorybill,” I said, “or he did some research and is lying—but I don’t believe he’s lying. He’s describing the bird perfectly but he’s using his own words, not the textbook descriptions. When he told me the bird’s head looked cartoonish and it moved in a nervous manner, I knew he had seen an ivorybill.”

I already had plans to leave for Louisiana, where I had leads that there might be a pair of ivory-billeds, but this sighting was too good, too fresh. Even if Gene wasn’t sure about what he had seen, I knew. I believed. This sighting was only six days old when I interviewed Gene. I told Tim, “My plans have changed. I’m going to Arkansas.” The next day I got an email from Tim. It simply said, “I’m going with you; can you pick me up in Memphis?”

Incredible! We had a believable sighting that was only six days old. Nine days later Tim, Gene, and I were floating down the bayou, hot on the trail of the ivory-billed woodpecker.

We put our canoe in at the bridge that crossed the bayou at Arkansas Highway 38, about 1:30 on a beautiful Thursday afternoon. That first day was a little shaky; every motion literally rocked the boat. Every time I steered the canoe in one direction, Tim tried to go in the opposite. Eventually, we began working together and by the end of the day we were doing better as a paddling duo.

The water level was low and travel was arduous. At times the channel would disappear and we would find ourselves in the swamp without a channel - shallow water with submerged cypress knees that can cause a canoe to capsize without notice. Often we had to get out of the canoe and slog through the mud, pulling and pushing the canoe as we went. The mud was boot-sucking muck. Each time we took a step forward, the muck would not release its grip on the engaged leg. If it were not for clinging to the canoe, we would have fallen face-first into the mud many times. Then it was back to deeper water, where we could paddle for a while before repeating the scenario.

The cypress trees in the bayou were magnificent, thrusting 150 feet or more toward the heavens, with a breast-height diameter of more than three feet. The tupelo trees were smaller but some were more than 2 feet in diameter and reached 80 feet tall. As I commented about the size of the trees, Gene remarked, “They get bigger as we go farther south.” These were not giant redwoods, but they were mighty impressive. We were in a beautiful, yet most inhospitable spot. A place where there just might be ivorybills.

As afternoon turned into evening, we needed to find a campsite. Dry land is a rare commodity in the swamp. At the end of a long lake, which the bayou entered, the ground level rose a few inches and we found a patch of dry soil. Hardwoods came to the edge of the swamp here. With a slight rise in elevation, the ecosystem made a transition from cypress/tupelo to oak, sweet gum, and hickory. There, on the edge of the swamp, we pitched our tents and made camp.

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