The above artwork by Michael DiGiorgio brings to life one of my Ivory-billed Woodpecker sightings.

Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in the Pearl River Basin

In April 2005, the biggest news in the history of wildlife conservation came from Arkansas, where a team led by Cornell University documented an Ivory-billed Woodpecker that was seen by several observers. There had been many sightings over the years, including a report of a pair in the Pearl River Basin along the southern border between Louisiana and Mississippi in 1999, but sightings had been sporadic since the 1940s and usually lacked any hard evidence or multiple sightings to back them up. The extreme wariness of the Arkansas bird suggested that other populations of ivorybills could easily be hiding out in other bottomland forests, and in fact it seemed obvious from the fact that the species had survived for so many decades that there must be a substantial (but extremely sparse) population. Having heard ivorybill calls near the Pearl River in February 2000, I knew there were ivorybills in that area waiting to be documented. I started a search in November 2005 and found a pair of ivorybills in February 2006. During one of the encounters, I obtained several video clips of a large woodpecker that has field marks and other characteristics of an ivorybill. Details of my search and video are posted here:

* Video from the Pearl (2006)

* Day-to-day log of the 2008 search season

* Day-to-day log of the 2007 search season

* Day-to-day log of the 2006 search season

Many others have gotten out in the field to help find populations of ivorybills, including a team led by Auburn University that found multiple pairs of ivorybills in the Choctawhatchee River in Florida. I spent some time with the Auburn group in January 2007, saw a pair of ivorybills, and obtained some video that is presented here:

* Video from the Choctawhatchee (2007)

Contact: cinclodes@yahoo.com


Other Interests

Bird Watching Trip Reports
Venus transits the Sun (June 8, 2004)
Photos from Manu National Park: Peruvian Amazon
Iguazu Falls: Near the Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay border
Photos from Big Bend National Park
Photos from Yellowstone National Park
Favorite Photo: Rio Maraņon (a branch of the Amazon) near Balsas, Peru
Wakefield Park: A Hotspot for Mourning and Connecticut Warblers
Rubik's Cube and other puzzles