Wil Goebel's painting of my White River sighting in March of 2003!

My 2003 Sighting at the White River in Arkansas

I first made a public statement about my sighting of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker on April 27th, 2005, more than two years after the sighting. My sighting in March of 2003 was the first reported in Arkansas since 1910, although I have recently heard from Arkansas sportsmen who have been familiar with the ivorybill throughout their lives. I have expanded my original report, which follows.

Many of you have wondered why after years of searching for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, giving lectures about the bird and the search, and reporting on the bird, my website came to a complete halt in March of 2003. It is because I actually saw the bird.

I had an exquisite look at a male Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas. I had traveled to the White River NWR with Bob Russell and two other companions. Bob had analyzed all of the available information about appropriate habitat and all of the old reports of ivorybills, and had identified this area as the best remaining habitat in America for the bird. This lovely bottomland swamp area was flooded at the time of our visit, and because of prior arrangements made by Bob, we were able to pass through several locked gates to get to an area of pristine forest in the southeast section of the refuge. 

I saw the bird, but 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, we had been traveling by car for about three hours without a rest stop when we arrived in the area to be searched. I got out of the car to stretch my legs, not to 'search' and as I was sitting in the back seat of the car, and the front car door was open, I 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 had previously seen Pileated Woodpeckers fly up in that way, after taking a drink, while I was searching in Louisiana. 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. This was not a Red-headed Woodpecker. 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 do not think any of them thought my sighting was real. 

I knew it wasn't some kind of hallucination because in addition to being quite sane, my mind wouldn't have generated a look like the one I had. Drawings of ivorybills hanging on trunks of trees that I had seen all showed a single large white triangle where the white trailing feathers of the wings came together as the bird tucked its wings against the body. My bird's wings were not so tightly pulled together, and I could see a strip of the black back of the bird between the two wings. This created the image of the two separate white triangles. When the bird dropped from the tree, the huge wingspan and the power of the bird in flight were amazing, just as Kenn Duke had described to me from his childhood sightings in Louisiana. I never saw a flap. And I never heard a sound. But it was a soul satisfying end to my quest to find a living ivorybill.

Bob Russell heard something unique on our return trip to the area a few days later. Although he would not declare it as an ivorybill, Bob, one of the finest birders in America ~ and one who knows every song and call note of North American birds~ heard something he had never heard before. And it sounded like the Peent call on the old tapes of ivorybilled woodpeckers. No one else heard it.

Searching for an "extinct" bird poses lots of problems. It seemed to me from the early days of the search in 2000 that it was important to keep up the excitement and interest of the ordinary birders who would have to be the ones to rediscover the bird. Professionals in ornithology and conservation weren't likely to commit themselves to such a search. Those who had done that in the past had generally been disregarded, discounted, or vilified. Very few had the courage to take ivorybill reports seriously. Bigfoot in America??? So, I made the decision to be public about my moments of excitement, my possible "glimpses" of something that could be the bird. The bird, after all, was the reason for this endeavor. I was not out to make myself a reputation as a birder. I hoped to stimulate ongoing commitment to refinding the bird. Of course, I did make myself a reputation with my colorful reporting. I got the reputation of being an amusing, possibly crazy, unreliable though sincere, ivorybill searcher. My reports are still available on Birding America, and they have been reworked, edited, and embellished by others in their writings on the rediscovery of the ivorybill. 

In February of 2002, I went on the road with a talk about the search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Because I was speaking to birding groups, they expected bird slides! So, I started the talk with a slideshow of the birds of the southern hardwood riverbottom swamp. I did not show a slide of an ivorybill. After showing this series of pictures of very nice, but very ordinary birds, very easily seen elsewhere, I asked how many of the crowd would seriously search through a swamp to get a look at the birds there. No one. And that was the point. Certainly it was possible for ivorybills to still be with us after 60 years without a verified sighting. No one had been seriously looking in their habitat! 

While giving these lectures, I fielded the same question several times. What would I do if I saw the bird?  I could never answer, except to say that it would depend on the circumstances and context of the sighting. In Louisiana, where the bird was first reported in April of 1999, the area was not a refuge ~ it was a wildlife management area primarily geared towards hunting and hunters. There, a prompt verified report of an ivorybill would have been a good thing, and would have led to greater protection for the bird. Where I saw the ivorybill, however, the habitat was secure. Furthermore, it was possible that additional tracts of land might be acquired to further enhance the long term survival possibilities for the species. This would be easier if the precious nature of the habitat was unknown to the owners.

It was immediately obvious to me that I could diminish the future hopes for the ivorybilled woodpecker by making my sighting public. There would be those that would start searching, and that very process could negatively impact the bird. I have the greatest respect and admiration for most of the birders I have known. But, unfortunately,  there are some birders (and bird photographers) who are willing to sacrifice a bird's well-being, or a fragile habitat, for their personal "tick" on a life list (or a great photo). And, the history of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker makes us wary of the possibility of private collectors (world-wide) seeking that rarest specimen for their collections. The pressure of collection is what finally drove the ivorybill into the deepest swamps after the habitat destruction that so restricted their range. Obviously, in today's world there will be no permits to shoot ivorybills, as there were when the species was in precipitous decline. But, the ivorybill remains an "object" of intense interest, and that could be hazardous to its health.

I was also aware that because of my reputation as described above, a general report about my sighting would be dismissed by the birding professionals, the academics and the conservationists. It was important that the bird be verified by individuals and institutions with the power base to get things accomplished on the bird's behalf. My strategy was to try and interest someone in some appropriate institution in the sighting, and then get out of the way. I knew that it would be easier for the "legitimate" folks to go forward if I distanced myself from the action.

I informed local wildlife officials in Arkansas of my sighting. I talked with Richard Hines, the refuge biologist at White River, and with the forester there. It was the first time the prospect of ivorybills in their midst had been raised. I talked with them about the specific feeding habits of the birds, and how they could enhance the chances for the birds through appropriate forest management. I then contacted Chris Tessaglia-Hymes at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and told him of my experience. Chris and I had corresponded about the search over the years, and I trusted him. It is because of Chris that the Cornell Lab of Ornithology got the inside track on the Ivorybill. Chris wasn't a bigwig at Cornell, and his work in the Bioacoustics Program didn't put him in the epicenter of possible interest, so Chris suggested that I contact Tim Gallagher with my sighting. I did so. It was interesting that Tim had been trying to contact me for some time, but until Chris's advice, he seemed just one of many who wanted to chat about their experiences, and mine. Until my sighting in Arkansas, I had nothing to say that was not on my website. So, I called Tim, who to his credit was able to get past my unsavory reputation and listen to the details of my sighting. It sparked his interest in Arkansas as a place to search. I put him in touch with Bob Russell as well, and Bob's report did generate serious interest in the White River region. The Cornell team deployed automatic recording units at the White River, but not until August, well past the time period when vocalizations would be more prominent in the breeding season. The results were first called "inconclusive", but in January of 2005, the Cornell ARUs placed within one mile of the location of my sighting at the White River picked up the first known ivorybill calls (a series of short toots) recorded since 1935. Of course, our scientist friends are still struggling to make the case for the calls ~ doing spectrographic analysis to make sure the calls weren't made by a mimic such as the blue jay.

I basically stopped updating my website after my sighting. I put a short paragraph on the site saying that we hadn't been able to "verify" the ivorybill on our trip to the White River ~ which was true. There was no hard evidence. But, I kept the link prominently displayed ~ "Report your Ivorybill sighting here!" And, as I had done for years, I continued receiving large numbers of reports of "ivorybilled woodpeckers" from around the country. I got reports from Nova Scotia, Wisconsin, you name it. People saw ivorybills eating out of their dogs' dishes, hanging on suet feeders, hopping around in their yards. I treated every report with respect and sent the observer a comparison of the Pileated Woodpecker and the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. I sent tips on observation. To some, I sent encouragement. And, a few reports over the years were compelling enough to be shared with Bob Russell and others. I received one of those reports from Gene Sparling in February of 2004. He had seen the bird while kayaking along the Cache River in Arkansas, to the northeast of where I'd seen the bird. The details were there, the location was great ~ I sent the report along to Tim Gallagher at Cornell. He called me, and we talked about it. Yes, I told him, you should get down there. The rest is the history that is now so public.

The strangest thing about seeing a living Ivory-billed Woodpecker was that it was just a bird, albeit a magnificent one, going about its life in the swamp. We humans tend to project our angst about the damage we have done to our natural world on icons of loss, like the ivorybill. Happily, the bird I saw was doing fine. He was cruising around a beautiful world, on a beautiful day, and although he may have been wondering if there was a female around, or how his little family was doing, he wasn't burdened with gloomy thoughts of extinction. That is our burden to bear.   

                                                                 Mary Scott

Before I went to law school, I studied physical anthropology, and obtained a Master's Degree with a focus on evolutionary theory. I lectured on "Evolution, Ivorybills, and Extinction" in 2002. I have modified my notes from that lecture and present them now, to provide an opportunity for deeper understanding of the challenges facing the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Give a click!

Evolution, Ivorybills and Extinction