Once Upon a Time in an Arkansas Bayou

Ivory-billed Woodpecker by John Schmitt

Today marks a special anniversary for me. It was exactly nineteen years ago on February 27, 2004, that Bobby Harrison and I saw an unmistakeable Ivory-billed Woodpecker fly across the water barely 70 feet in front of our canoe and swing up to land on the trunk of a tupelo. It's a moment I'll never forget. We both yelled "Ivory-bill!" and, of course, spooked the bird, which flew a short distance to another tree and quickly hitched around to the other side of the trunk. We frantically paddled to the edge of the water, abandoned our canoe, and went off scrambling through mud and over fallen tree trunks as the huge woodpecker flew from tree to tree, tantalizingly close and yet so out of reach. Bobby had been searching for Ivory-bills for more than 30 years. He broke down and wept after our sighting, saying, "I saw an Ivory-bill...I saw an Ivory-bill..." I just stood in stunned silence. 

Until that moment, I had been somewhat agnostic about whether the Ivory-billed Woodpecker still existed. There were strong points on both sides of the argument. But regardless, I felt it was vitally important to locate people who had memories of this bird and to interview them as soon as possible. Many of the people I interviewed in the beginning were in their 90s, and I knew they wouldn't be around much longer. If the Ivory-bill truly was extinct, these people were our last connection with the species, so I reasoned that we better ask any questions we have about the bird right now. 

But in the course of my research, I found seemingly believable people who'd had much more recent sightings than that of the bird sketched by artist Don Eckelberry in Louisiana's Singer Tract in 1944. Some of them had purportedly been seen in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s by various hunters and others who knew the area and its wildlife well and seemed believable. Bobby and I started going together to check out the areas where the sightings took place. All too often, the areas had been destroyed to make way for agriculture and various other developments. But sometimes the places still looked great. The only problem was it had been so long since these sightings took place.

Then it happened. A kayaker, Gene Sparling, saw a large woodpecker in a bayou in eastern Arkansas and posted a description on a canoe club list-serv. We tracked Gene down and spoke on the phone with him just four days after his sighting. Bobby and I dropped everything and headed to Arkansas a few days later to spend a week floating the bayou with Gene. 

Bobby and I launched our canoe in the muddy brown bayou and followed Gene Sparling into a wilderness of swamp.

Bobby (left) and Gene on a chilly morning at Bayou de View on February 27, 2004. 

Tim Gallagher at Bayou de View.

Shortly after 1:00 in the afternoon—while Gene was up ahead, half a mile or so away—the bird flew across in front of us and changed our lives forever.

We went through every emotion imaginable before Gene came back and found us babbling barely coherently about the bird we'd seen. "Welcome to the Sasquatch Club," he said, and we all laughed our heads off. 

Tim and Bobby about an hour after their Ivory-bill sighting.

Left to right, Gene Sparling, Bobby Harrison, and Tim Gallagher later on the day of the sighting.

Ed Bradley interviewing Tim Gallagher and Bobby Harrison for "60 Minutes."

If you'd like to read more about our Ivory-billed Woodpecker searches in 2004 and 2005, here's a link to "The Best Kept Secret"—an article my wife, Rachel Dickinson, wrote for Audubon fourteen months after our sighting. Or you could read my book, The Grail Bird.

As many of you know, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has proposed declaring the Ivory-billed Woodpecker extinct and removing it from the Endangered Species List. In response, I wrote an opinion piece for Audubon titled "Is it Really Time to Write the Ivory-billed Woodpecker's Epitaph?" At the moment, the final decision is still pending—and frankly, I strongly hope they decide against it.