Ivory-billed Woodpecker Sightings at Bayou DeView, Arkansas

The ivory-billed woodpecker, Campephilus principalis, is North America's largest woodpecker. Its last commonly accepted sighting in the United States came in April 1944, on Louisiana's Singer Tract. It was widely believed extinct.

In eastern Arkansas, a remnant of the old delta forest survives. The Big Woods. About 550,000 acres, left from an original 8 million. Through Cache River National Wildlife Refuge runs Bayou DeView, a swamp of tupelo and cypress.

February 11, 2004, about two in the afternoon. Gene Sparling of Hot Springs was kayaking alone about 8 km west of Brinkley, with no binoculars. A bird landed on a tree about 20 m in front of his kayak. It was unusually large, with extensive white on the folded wing, an odd yellowish tint at the edges, a light coloured bill and a crest showing some red. He described its movements as jerky and animated, with a cartoonish quality.

Tim Gallagher, editor of Living Bird magazine at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Bobby R. Harrison, an associate professor at Oakwood College, interviewed him. On February 27 the three men floated down Bayou DeView. Gallagher sat in the bow, Harrison in the stern. Sparling paddled ahead, looking for the spot of his first sighting.

Shortly after one o'clock on a clear afternoon, a large black-and-white woodpecker burst into view and flew across the main channel, less than 70 feet away. Gallagher remembered the deepest, darkest black and the snow-white trailing edges of its wings. It swung up as if to land on a tupelo. Both men shouted "Ivory-bill!" at the same moment. The bird veered away, landed a couple of times on the backs of tupelo trunks, and was gone into the swamp.

They ran after it carrying camcorders. They never filmed it. Each man sketched the bird independently. About 15 minutes later, Harrison sat on a log, began to sob, and said "I saw an ivory-bill" twice.

The Big Woods Conservation Partnership, led by the Cornell Lab and The Nature Conservancy, kept its search secret. It logged more than 7,000 search hours and at least 15 sightings. On April 25, 2004, David Luneau of UA Little Rock caught a blurry bird on a camera left running in his canoe, with 11 wing beats in 1.2 seconds of flight. On April 28, 2005, the find was announced in Science and at a Washington press conference with Interior Secretary Gale Norton. Cornell's director, John Fitzpatrick, said: "The bird captured on video is clearly an ivory-billed woodpecker."

The rival was the pileated woodpecker, a similar large black-and-white bird. In 2006 Sibley and colleagues argued in Science that the Luneau video fits a pileated. Jerome Jackson called the result "faith-based" ornithology, and Cornell answered both in print. In 2007 J. Martin Collinson concluded the bird was "probably a Pileated Woodpecker." No hoax was ever alleged against the witnesses.

In 2021 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed declaring the species extinct. Fitzpatrick called it "absolutely premature." In October 2023 the agency declared 21 species extinct but not the ivory-bill, saying it would keep reviewing the evidence.

Brinkley branded itself "Home of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker," with Ivory-Bill haircuts and an "Ivory Bill burger." Books, films and a Sufjan Stevens song followed. In 2021 Sparling was sorry they never found clear-cut substantiation. "We were never able to get that 8-by-10 glossy."