For sixty years the bird books have been telling us that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), a rare bird that dwelt in the oldest growth forests in the southeastern United States had gone extinct.  Sporadic sightings have been reported but none have been confirmed… until now…

… This is huge. Just huge,” said Frank Gill, senior ornithologist at the Audubon Society. “It is kind of like finding Elvis.” …

I'll say!  Back when I was birding regularly, no bird was more like a holy grail than old Ivory Bill.  Prior to this sighting, the last confirmed sighting was in Louisiana in 1943.  Subsequent to that there were unconfirmed sightings into the 1950's and all the way up to the 1980's in Cuba for the subspecies of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers native to that island.

The National Geographic Society Field Guide to the Birds of North America (3rd Ed) describes the Ivory-billed in the past tense:

…Once our largest woodpecker, Ivory-billed required large tracts of old-growth river forest; dead and dying trees supplied nesting sites and food: the larvae of wood-boring beetles.  Destruction of habitat in the last half of the 19th and early 20th centuries led to the probable extinction of this never common species.

The Roger Tory Peterson field guide Eastern Birds says:

…Reports in recent years (needing further verification) from Florida, Louisiana, S. Carolina, and e. Texas (Big Thicket).  Very close to extinction, if, indeed, it still exists.

These respected guides didn't come right out and say the species was gone, but many birders believed it was.  The Stokes Field Guide to Birds (Eastern Region) and the lauded National Audubon Society Sibley Guide to Birds don't mention the Ivory-billed at all. 

Since the last reports thought valid (in the 50's) there have continued to be unconfirmed reports on rare occasions, but the problem is that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker very closely resembles the Pileated Woodpecker which is much more common and less shy.  The latter reports are thought to have been misidentification of this other bird.

But many birders held out hope that perhaps the shy bird was surviving in small numbers somewhere.  Perhaps it would again be found.  Many have visited the wild places of the deep south looking for the elusive and enormous Ivory-billed.

In the last few years apparently more uncomfirmed reports have come in that have sounded tantalizingly accurate.  Finally though, somebody caught the bird on video.  There is no question that the images captured are of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

Mary Scott of BirdingAmerica.com reported spotting an Ivory-billed in 2003:

…I did not get a picture. Those of you who have read reports of previous searches know that I never was without my trusty video camera strapped to my hand while searching. Well, I had been traveling by car for about three hours without a rest stop when I arrived (with several search companions) in the area to be searched. I got out … and walked to the rear of the car to stretch. Each of my companions walked in the other direction. Just minutes had passed when my eye caught sight of a large woodpecker flying up off the flooded forest floor. … I stood transfixed as I saw the bird land on a tree about 50 feet away. I had an unobstructed view. The sight was overwhelming. The bird was huge, and was hanging from the trunk of the tree, not more than 15 feet off the ground, with its wings folded on its back. There were two large white triangles on the wings. A shaft of sunlight was shimmering through the red crest. The bird had a long neck and prominent shoulders. My mind was clicking off the field marks, but there could be no doubt as to what I was seeing. The tension between wanting to just observe and wanting to call to my friends was profound. After I had fully absorbed the bird, I started to call out the field marks to my friends in a 'loud whisper'. By the time I started the second sentence, the bird dropped from the tree, spread its wings, and glided away from me, out of sight. The vision of the bird's wingspan was extraordinary. So very very long were the wings, and the trailing edge was brilliant white. My companions rushed over, the bird was gone, and they were incredulous…

…I informed local wildlife officials in Arkansas of my sighting. I then contacted friends at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and told them of my experience. … For me, the search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker had ended. I had found the bird, and it was more than enough…

Cornell Lab of Ornithology has released a wonderful new website, Rediscovering the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker which details their expedition to confirm the continued existence of the species in 2004.  Its a long and fascinating story.  I'll close with my favorite segment:

February 27, 2004: [Tim] Gallagher [editor of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's Living Bird magazine] recalled, “On the second day of our trip, at approximately 1:15 in the afternoon, a large black-and-white woodpecker with the characteristic color pattern of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker flew across the bayou at close range in front of [Bobby] Harrison [associate professor at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama] and me. We cried out simultaneously, 'Ivory-bill!' and paddled frantically toward shore. As soon as we landed, we took off through the boot-sucking muck and mire of the swamp, climbing up and over fallen trees and through branches, with camcorder in hand and running. Although the bird landed on tree trunks briefly a couple of times, we weren't able to catch up with it or take video.”

“Fifteen minutes later, I suggested that we sit down and write detailed field notes, before we'd had a chance to think much about what we had seen or to confer with each other.

“As he finished his notes, Harrison sat down on a log, put his face in his hands, and began to sob. 'I saw an ivory-bill,' he said. I stood quietly a few feet away, too choked with emotion to speak,” Gallagher said.

Later, Harrison said, “I have always believed that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker still lived, and finding one has been a dominant force in my life for more than three decades. Finding an ivory-bill was a 33-year dream come true for me.”

Welcome back, Woody.

The story was broken today in the journal “Science”.