On the afternoon of February 11, 2004, a lone kayaker paddling the bayous of the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, Arkansas, spotted something remarkable. The kayaker, naturalist Gene Sparling, caught a glimpse of a large, red-crested woodpecker flying towards him. The bird, which flew in a "herky jerky" or "cartoon-like" manner (Cornell Lab of Ornithology 2005) landed about 20 meters from Sparling, near the base of the tree. Sparling noted the birds field marks and, after careful consideration, concluded the bird he had seen was something very special: an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), a species that was presumed extinct more than 60 years ago.
Sparling's sighting attracted the attention of bird experts Tim Gallagher and Bobby Harrison, who later that month made a trip to Arkansas to speak with Sparling and to have a look around the Cache River for themselves. Gallagher and Harrison didn't have to wait long before they too had something to report. On February 27, 2004, within half a kilometer from Sparling's earlier sighting, an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker flew directly in front of their canoe.
A total of seven sightings were made between February 2004 and February 2005, as birders flocked to the region to see for themselves whether the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker was indeed still living in the lowland forests of Arkansas. Perhaps the most intriguing sighting during that time was made on April 25, 2005, when David Luneau and Robert Henderson captured video footage of a large woodpecker as it perched on the trunk of a water tupelo and then flew away.
The video was analyzed in detail in an article published in the June 2005 issue of Science magazine. The stills from the video depict a bird with large areas of white on its wings. It wings lacked the dark trailing edges characteristic of a similar species, the Pileated Woodpecker, the bird most likely to be mistaken for an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker.
In February 2006, further analysis of the video was published by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.
References
- Fitzpatrick J.W. et al. 2005. Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) Persists in Continental North America. Science. 308: 5727 (1460-1462).
- Cornell Lab of Ornithology. 2005. Seven Sightings.
- Ivory-Billed Woodpecker
