Rare woodpecker elusive as search season ends

[tocqueville]

By Deborah Zabarenko
Thu May 18, 4:05 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The search for the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker in the swamps of Arkansas has ended for the season with no confirmed sighting, wildlife experts said on Thursday, but they plan to start looking again in late autumn.

The "Lord God bird" -- so-called because of the exclamation it prompted from those who saw it -- was last officially seen in 1944, but eyewitness reports and a four-second video of the ivory-bill in flight in 2004 convinced many scientists the crow-sized woodpecker has come back from presumed extinction.

An intensive six-month search in the Big Woods area of Arkansas failed to turn up any renewed sightings, bird experts and wildlife officials said in a telephone news conference.

"Certainly we're somewhat disappointed," said Ron Rohrbaugh, director of Cornell University's search for the bird. "But we have had enough of these kind of tantalizing sounds and possible encounters with birds ... that we still have a lot of hope that there might be a pair."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060518/sc_nm/environment_woodpecker_dc_1