Will Texas' Big Thicket Wilderness Give Up the Elusive Ivory-Billed Woodpecker?

[Omaha Steve]

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Will Texas' Big Thicket Wilderness Give Up the Elusive Ivory-Billed Woodpecker?

03-25-2007 3:31 AM
By MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press Writer

BIG THICKET NATIONAL PRESERVE, Texas (Associated Press) -- Corinne Campbell stuffs her gear in waterproof sacks and stuffs them and herself into a tiny circular cutout that marks the seat in her green kayak. With a clear signal from the GPS unit clipped near her orange vest, she shoves off between large downed tree trunks. Then she propels her tiny needle-nose craft into a wide rain-swollen creek that wiggles through what's been called the biological crossroads of North America. And so begins another daylong search for a giant bird that may not exist.

Campbell and a pair of companions in similar kayaks have been on a tedious winter-long canvass of Texas' famed Big Thicket, an often impenetrable jungle of swamps choked with thorny vines and prodigious pine and cedar trees, in pursuit of the ivory-billed woodpecker.

The bird, at 20 inches with a nearly three-foot wingspan, is the third-largest woodpecker in the world and the biggest woodpecker north of Mexico.

The first sighting in generations was made by Gene Sparling in Arkansas on Feb. 11, 2004, and has spawned interest across the South. Biologists converged on the Arkansas bayou area of the sighting and subsequently captured a 4-second video of what they said was an ivory-billed. Just this month, however, a Scottish scientist, in a British biology journal article, said identification of the bird from the video couldn't be certain.

The last East Texas sighting of an ivory-billed was more than a century ago _ in 1904.

"There's a lot of doubters out there that this bird does exist," said Campbell, from Emmaus, Pa. "I believe it exists."

A more perplexing question is even if the bird lives here, will Campbell, her fellow searchers or anyone else see it in the Big Thicket, which is almost 100,000 acres of swamps, bogs and forests in Southeast Texas about 100 miles northeast of Houston.

"It's challenging, very challenging," Campbell said. "I'd describe it as trying to climb through a cement wall."

The already difficult terrain was made even worse 18 months ago when Hurricane Rita knocked over thousands of trees that now litter the landscape. But that may be good for the ivory-billed woodpecker, which feeds on beetle larvae that inhabit dying or recently dead trees.

The duck-sized bird, marked by black and white feathers and its namesake ivory-colored bill, has achieved a kind of exalted status among bird watchers and biologists.

FULL article at link.

[efhmc]

1. I would love to see this bird really exist but I doubt that is does. Wish

my ancestors who lived there had taken notes on the fauna and flora.