http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/21/science/21PECK.html
February 21, 2002
Searchers Say Rare Woodpecker Was Possibly Heard, if Not Seen
By JAMES GORMAN
A team that spent 30 days in a swampy Louisiana forest looking for a woodpecker
long thought to be extinct reported yesterday that members may have heard the
bird, but they did not see it.
The team was looking for the ivory-billed woodpecker, an almost mythical bird
with its striking black and white coloration and its 30-inch wingspan, which
made it the largest woodpecker in North America.
There has not been a sighting of an ivory bill that is generally accepted as
confirmed for about half a century. What prompted the Louisiana search was a
reported sighting of a pair of ivory bills in the spring of 1999 by David
Kulivan, a student at Louisiana State University. Mr. Kulivan convinced a number
of skeptics that his sighting was credible.
On Jan. 27, at 3:30 p.m., four of the six members of the search team, in an
undisclosed spot in the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area near Slidell, La.,
heard a series of double raps characteristic of the drumming of the ivory-billed
woodpecker. They managed to record the last double- rap of the sequence and some
subsequent rapping.
On the same day, members of a Cornell Lab of Ornithology research group heard a
similar sound in the same area, and two days later, other members of the team
heard loud rapping uncharacteristic of other woodpeckers.
The searchers found other possible evidence of ivory bills in the area where the
rapping washeard, including bark scraped off trees and large nest cavities.
On the other hand, despite an extensive investigation of the area where the
sounds were heard, no one saw the woodpecker and no one heard its distinctive
call, often described as a nasal "kent kent."
There is also the possibility that another large bird, the pileated woodpecker,
could have made the noise or produced the other evidence. The searchers said,
though, that pileated woodpeckers had never been known to make this particular
rapping sound.
"We are puzzled," said David Luneau, a birder and professor of engineering
technology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, who spoke for the
six-member search team, which was supported by Zeiss Sports Optics.
"We recommend more searches in the area," Professor Luneau said, adding that his
opinion was that the bird was not extinct.
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