Never Giving Up
By Sue Leaf

Only David Sibley, illustrator and author of the lauded Sibley Guide to Birds, had apparently decided that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, the bird that has haunted birdwatchers for half a century, was extinct. All other guides on my bookshelf—the Peterson Guide, the Golden Guide to North American Birds, the National Geographic guide—each one gave “the Lord God Bird” a picture and a paragraph describing its features, habits and geographic range.

Birders never really lost hope that the Ivory-bill had somehow beaten the rap of habitat loss, that it was still Out There, in some inaccessible swamp in the southern United States. That is exactly where a sighting was confirmed earlier this year by scientists from Cornell Laboratories. Indeed, two of the men on the expedition had harbored dreams as children of being the one to re-discover the bird.

In the 1930s, a young graduate student working in northeastern Louisiana, on land known as the “Singer “ tract (owned by the Singer Sewing Company) completed his doctoral dissertation for Cornell University on Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. It was the first and last definitive study of the largest of North America’s woodpeckers. The researcher, James Tanner, outline specific guidelines to take in order to preserve the species; by 1939, he estimated that only six birds lived on the 80,000 acre Singer tract, and only two dozen in all of North America. Audubon led the fight to save the crucial habitat, but the valuable woods were cut, anyway. The last verified sighting of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker was in 1944.

Still, it was hard to give the bird up to extinction. An article by Florida ornithologist Jerome Jackson in Birder’s World in June 2002—before the Cornell Laboratory confirmed its existence-- tells of his endless pursuit of Ivory-bills. He thought he saw one in March, 1973 in Mississippi near the Alabama border. He and a graduate student might have spied one in March, 1987 in mature bottomland hardwoods near Vicksburg, Mississippi. He also heard it call at that site—the note sounding like the toot of a toy trumpet… or was it a Blue Jay, mimicking? He thought he might have seen the woodpecker in Cuba in 1988.

The trouble was, Ivory-bills hang out in inhospitable swampy woods. They could be mistaken for the somewhat smaller Pileated Woodpecker. The much smaller Red-headed Woodpecker resembles its wing pattern when it flies. The nasal kient call has been known to be picked up by jays, and darn it! White-breasted Nuthatches can also sound like the elusive birds.

Now, what seemed too good to be true has been verified: Ivory-billed Woodpeckers live on this earth. It is possible I will, in my lifetime, see one. Pray that we have the wisdom to act on our second chance.

Sue

"Hope" is the thing with feathers--
That perches in the soul--
And sings the tune without the words--
And never stops-- at all--

Emily Dickinson