Cuban Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Articles and Comments by various

Draft 2020; 2025

The Cuban Ivory-billed Woodpecker attracted attention from "northern" conservation groups, researchers, birders and photographers. During the last century both the American and Cuban taxa were considered one species so there was some overlap in the people involved in trying to learn more about the "species". 

Here, first are the two short articles soon after the '86 to '87 rediscovery in Cuba of the Cuban Ivory-billed.  Then there is a prior, hard to find, Lamb Research Report:


An abridged 20th century chronological history of the efforts include John Dennis and Davis Crompton (1948), George and Nancy Lamb (1956), Orlando Garrido (1968, details to be researched, no pictures) and Cuban biologists Giraldo Alayón and Alberto Estrada (1986), Short (1985 and '86).   

Copyright Estrada and Alayon

 1986 

Here is the New York Times article that details the above events in Cuba.

Noteworthy, is Short's mistaken thought the Cuban Ivory-billed was essentially the same as the mainland species even though they diverged, unbeknownst to him, approximately a million years ago. His more than optimistic outlook that someday excess Cuban IBs could be used to reestablish the species in the USA is rather bizarre. J. Jackson wandered deeper into fiction by stating that the IB could have been brought by humans to the mainland from Cuba.  

 

Related to the land preservation the Ivory-billed has always and still needs (2016) assistance.

Mac McClelland (2016) wrote:  

The Cuban sightings in the ’80s got the forest they’ve just exited protected, and perhaps not a moment too soon—three of the areas where George Lamb photographed the Ivory-bills in the ’50s are completely logged and mined out, in a country that is really just now opening up and increasing infrastructure and investment.

• May 23, 2006

• #9

The species is considered likely to be extinct in Cuba, as intensive searches have not found any new records subsequent to those of the late 1980s. Calls heard in 1998 suggested that it might survive in the highest reaches of the Sierra Maestra in south-east Cuba, an area from which there had been no historical records and at an elevation higher than the known altitudinal range of the species. Follow-up searches in the area found poor habitat and no indications of presence of the species. Any remnant population in either the USA or Cuba is likely to be tiny.

references can be found here:

http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/species/index.html?action=SpcHTMDetails.asp&sid=719&m=0

• Mar 11, 2016

• #18

Melanie said:

Is there any photograph of Orlando Garrido's Cuban Ivory-billed woodpecker sighting in 1968?

No. Nor of any of the sightings that came after.

Interesting comment by an earlier poster about political events. The Cuban revolution and the US administration’s reaction to it almost certainly came at precisely the wrong time for Ivorybills in Cuba. In the late 1940s and mid 1950s, Dennis Lamb had found a reasonably healthy population of the species in the Cuban Oriente, and the US chapter of ICBP were very interested in actively conserving it as a result. All of that went of the window with the ascent of Castro.

I’d personally say that people have been looking in the wrong places for Ivorybills in Cuba. The Sierra Maestra is well known (among many Cubans) to be what we’d call in Brazil detonada (think detonated), while it was plain the Cuchillas was running out of habitat fast in the early to mid 1980s. That doesn’t mean that Cuban Ivorybills are still around, but there are a lot of remote areas in eastern Cuba, with no roads nearby. Cuban Kites and Cuban Solenodons persist in such areas and have only been found recently, despite all the field work by Lammertink and others, so we should keep hope, but probably not expectation.

Prior to the 1956 George and Nancy Lamb, recent college graduates at the time, came to study Cuban vory-bills on a grant from the Pan-American Section of the International Committee for Bird Preservation.

The Lambs communicated with a rather brief 2 man effort sponsored by National Audubon Cuban in 2016 that mainly went to the 1986 sightings location. The production of double knocks, the main survey method may have only covered 12 square miles; the visit seemed a bit dis-organized other than  for media attention.

Comment by  (A few minutes ago I actually received an email from the Lambs, now in their 80s, saying: “That should be a great adventure! Good luck and please let us know what you find. Thanks for keeping us in the loop, George & Nancy.”) The two spent several months in eastern Cuba, in the same area we will be traveling, and located six pairs. In the paper George Lamb published the following year, he suggested conservation measures to the major landowners in the area (Bethlehem Cuba Iron Mines Company and Freeport Sulphur) that should be taken to preserve the birds’ habitat. And the companies seemed to be amenable to the measures.

But in January 1959, the Cuban revolutionaries, who had been fighting government forces for several years, finally overthrew the Batista Regime and took over Cuba, and very little news of the birds came out of the country—that is, until 1986, when Lester Short of the American Museum of Natural History and his colleagues announced seeing Ivory-bills in the mountains of eastern Cuba. It was a huge story, and so hopeful. Perhaps the birds could be saved. But then the trail went cold. The last sighting in Cuba was in 1987.

Comments by others: DN 

Although once common on the island, C. p. bairdii was already very rare by the late 1940s, when Dennis located a small population in a remnant of forest in the Cuchillas de Moa range which had already been cut-over for timber some years previously. George Lamb found six territories still there in 1956, and recommended that a conservation plan be implemented, but the 1959 Cuban Revolution was to intervene.

The last universally accepted sighting of a Cuban ivory-billed woodpecker occurred in 1987, when a single female specimen was identified in the mountains of eastern Cuba by Giraldo Alayón and Aimé Pasada, following a handful of observations of both male and female birds by a team of ornithologists, including Lester L. Short and his wife Jennifer F. M. Horne, in the area of Ojito de Agua, a hilly pine forest. Although the area was immediately designated as protected by the Cuban government, searches in 1991 and 1993 failed to find any further traces of the bird, and it became clear that the birds seen in 1986–87 had already been in "dire" circumstances. Thus the Cuban ivory-bill was inferred to have gone extinct around 1990. The area given protection in the 1980s is now part of Alejandro de Humboldt National Park.

The IUCN Red List notes that calls were reportedly heard in 1998 in the highest reaches of the Sierra Maestra, but that a subsequent search failed to find any trace of the species or of good potential habitat: it is considered a (remote) possibility that some individuals may survive, as around 80% of suitable habitat in Cuba has yet to be searched.

As with C. p. principalis, C. p. bairdii was thought to inhabit old-growth forests with a plentiful supply of dead or dying trees; these were a source of the cerambycid and other beetle larvae that formed the bulk of its diet. Most of Cuba's lowland deciduous forests had been cleared by the early 20th century, and the species became restricted to the montane pine forests in the northeastern part of the island. Its original range was given as through the Organ Mountains, in the lowland forests of the Ensenada de Cochinos and along the Hanabana River.

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The Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Alabama, Past, Present and Future 

Draft 6/30/23, update Draft 2/26/25, update draft 4/17/25    

The Ivory-billed Woodpecker's 21st century existence has been proven with a careful review of thousands of pages of field data, sighting reports and supporting audio and video frames. Lingering however is the popular, erroneous dogma of its long-ago extinction supported by a refusal to accept its innate wariness and low detection rate. The species demographics has been and is misunderstood by many including various bird record committees and understaffed, governmental departments. 

The commonsense bias, based on "none of us have seen the bird" denies the actual facts that hundreds of reliable people claim the opposite. Ignored is  data, several published papers, thousands of video frames, the numerous field reports, along with the impacts of microevolution on this specie's behavior in the Anthropocene.

This context has led to many state bird record committees and state resource departments maintaining their dispositive, formal extirpation or extinction designation for the species. In light of what we have learned about Ivory-bills, these "conclusive" determinations were not based on science but on group think and seemingly sensible assumptions and preserved today by face-saving apathy. 

How to judge the proportionality of culpability for the diminution of the bird's numbers is as difficult to agree upon as who is responsible for prolonging the falsehood that Ivory-bills were not seen after 1944 and into the 21st century.  

Here is an examination of Alabama, which would be similar for other SE US states, on how this bias and stagnant situation can be settled with field data rather than opinion. Utilizing proper, accepted field survey techniques would benefit the bird, birders, science and conservation. 

        

The Past- prior to 1944  The Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) was a relatively common resident of forested areas in most or all of Alabama several centuries ago. It became restricted to wetland forests in south Alabama as the 19th century progressed. Some unconfirmed reports over the decades infer the Ivory-billed may have lingered in a few central and northern areas of the state into the 20th century. Tanner writes, “By 1885 the birds had disappeared from North Carolina and northern South Carolina and from all the region west of the Mississippi Delta excepting the very southeastern part of Texas. By 1900 they were gone from almost all of Alabama and Mississippi.”

Estimated Original Range of the Ivory-billed  Data © 2003 by NatureServe.

After the devastating Civil War, poverty was rampant and subsistence hunting increased. Logging of the forests accelerated, and many local Ivory-billed populations were displaced, exposed or hunted to collapse.  

Description	Map of the range of the Ivory-billed woodpecker, pre 1860 (solid black line), 1891 (hashed area)
Date	April 1891
Source	The Auk, Volume 8, No. 2
Author	Edwin M. Hasbrouck

The last confirmed bird via specimen in Alabama was shot in the Conecuh River swamps north of Troy in 1907. There were subsequent Alabama sightings without an associated specimen. 

In the Florida panhandle, a small population was thought to persist post 2005 and perhaps into the 2020s in the Florida panhandle, near SE Alabama.
 

Conecuh River swamps just north of Troy, Alabama (red circle, upper middle of this map), was where the last AL Ivory-billed specimen was shot in 1907. This area is 200 miles due N of the Choctawhatchee River Water Management Area in FL.

Today the forested riparian areas around Troy, Alabama are fragmented, with a narrow corridor of trees along wetland areas. Although these sinuous corridors have little chance of supporting breeding Ivory-bills now, they have in the past provided an acceptable, but increasingly precarious greenway, connecting larger forest tracts of the SE USA.

Does Alabama represent a gap in our understanding of Ivory-bills that almost everyone had in the United States in 1932? That year the colorful and well-educated Mason Spencer insisted they were alive in Louisiana, and he could prove it. Although the last documented sighting of the species in the state had been in 1899, he received a hunting permit and legally brought in a fresh Ivory-billed. 

Tennessee is another example of specimen records and even field reports being uncorrelated with actual presence. While Ivory-billed Woodpeckers certainly occurred in some bottomland forests of the state, no definitive records or evidence from the state may be known (2025).  However paralleling the main rationale, the species may have been detected recently:  "The crew surveyed 3,560 acres of federal land transects, 2,010 acres at Chickasaw NWR and 1,550 acres at Lower Hatchie NWR. Possible encounters include single and double raps heard on January 8th and 9th, 2007."  (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2010. Recovery Plan for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis). U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Atlanta, Georgia. pg. 5)

For example are forested bottomlands in Alabama, Tennessee, etc. examples of the reestablishment of a very few pairs of Ivory-bills post Singer Tract, LA and SE USA logging.  

Since several or more, Ivory-bills persisted into the 21st century, breeding and dispersal must have occurred undetected for several decades in a heterogenous pattern. The remnant ribbons of habitat, connecting larger forest blocks, evidently allowed some periodic gene flow for the few remaining metapopulations or isolated family groups of Ivory-bills; this maintained at least some viability. 

The historical literature on the Ivory-billed in Alabama is limited. The classic Birds of Alabama by Arthur H. Howell, USDA, issued by the Department of Game and Fisheries of Alabama in 1928 is highlighted here. The work contains an introduction to the state's early history of field ornithology with a few pages on the Ivory-billed.   

Birds of Alabama, select pages

 

 

Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1928 Howell:

 

Small part of the NBP analysis of the 2008 flyunder IBWO video (Collins, 2008 video, Virrazzi, 2022 paper and derivative videos)  

One is struck by Howell's 1928 introductory proclamation that the species is "undoubtedly extinct in Alabama." This forceful statement from a USDA employee that wrote about hundreds of species is more a function of assumption than any direct contemporary field knowledge of Ivory-bill demographics. The population decline and ecology of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker from an era that predates quantitative ornithology, was not understood or ever carefully contemplated.  To this day the original specie's range, degree of specialization, habitat preferences, facultative capabilities in secondary forests, epigenetic expression and so on arguable. Howells' statement is dubious. 

There is absolutely no evidence that Howell did any meaningful Ivory-billed searching himself or that his cumulative research elucidated anything approaching a comprehensive understanding of the specie's actual status in the state. Howell gathered no dispositive evidence that the Ivory-billed was extinct by 1928 in Alabama; at least 1,000,000 acres of virgin forest remained with many more acres of second growth. Howell undoubtedly established the beachhead for the continued disinterest in the Ivory-billed in the state. 

In 1942, the National Audubon Society issued its  Research Report No. 1, by James Tanner, "The Ivory-billed Woodpecker". There are two pertinent mentions of IBWO Alabama locations; site fidelity should never be underestimated even if the areas were not continuously forested in the 20th century. Aerials should be viewed by experienced, successful Ivory-billed researchers and subsequent visits, and formal surveys arranged if warranted.

From Research Report No. 1, "The Ivory-billed Woodpecker":

   

In 1838, English naturalist Philip Henry Gosse lived and taught school for eight months in the community of Pleasant Hill, about 18 miles south of Selma in Dallas County, Alabama. Two decades later, when he had become a prominent figure in British science circles, Gosse published "Letters from Alabama, Chiefly Relating to Natural History."

Gosse wrote of his encounters with the ivory-billed in the woods of Dallas County. Tanner notes the event in the Alabama Region of his report. The pair of birds he had come across, he wrote, were "rapping some tall dead pines, in a dense part of the forest, which rang with their loud notes."

In describing the bird's call and plumage, Gosse clearly knew the difference between the ivory-billed and the pileated woodpecker (The Huntsville Times, 2006; al.com, 2006).

USFWS - Recovery Plan for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker

In 2010, as a byproduct of the IBWO "rediscovery" in Arkansas 2004, the USFWS completed a Recovery Plan for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker

 
This is an important reference since it was compiled by many people utilizing their accumulated knowledge, sources, data and files.

Here are the pertinent Alabama parts of the Plan (2010, some paragraph breaks added by author):

In part due to the Big Thicket reports, the Southwest Region of the Service during the late 1980s initiated range-wide status review for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and contracted Jackson (2004) to conduct the work. Jackson’s report provides a thorough review of all past reports and an assessment of whether the Ivory-billed Woodpecker could still persist in the Southeastern U.S. 

Jackson’s findings were inconclusive as he found no hard evidence to confirm the species’ existence but discussed in some detail his own possible encounters with the species. Jackson provides two accounts of his experiences, one along the Noxubee River in Alabama just across the Mississippi state line and the other in Mississippi along the Yazoo River confluence with the Mississippi River. For the Noxubee River account he glimpsed what he thought could have been an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in 1973, but no further evidence has emerged since the 1970s in Alabama.

For the Yazoo River account, Jackson and his graduate student, Mr. Malcolm Hodges (who now works for The Nature Conservancy in Georgia), reported hearing a bird in 1987 that in their view closely matched the Cornell tape recording of the species. The bird in question apparently was responding to their playing of the Cornell tape, but never came in close enough for a visual contact, and Jackson and Hodges had no capability to record what they heard. In sum, there have been numerous reports of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers since the 1940s, and Jackson’s plea for the public to provide information during his status review resulted in hundreds of letters and phone calls to Service biologists. Most of these reports again were dismissed easily as misidentified Pileated Woodpeckers and in some cases Red-headed Woodpeckers.

Still, as suggested above, tantalizing reports including photographs, tape recordings, and a feather suggest that Ivory-billed Woodpeckers could have persisted in very low numbers in highly isolated locations at least till the late 1980s. Nevertheless, near the end of the 20th Century there was absolutely no undisputed evidence acceptable to the scientific community to back up any claim that Ivory-billed Woodpeckers persisted past the 1940s. Thus, after more than a decade of relative silence, it came as a great surprise to many in the conservation community that an apparently solid report of a pair of birds had been observed in the late 1990s, this time along the Pearl River on the Louisiana side. Mr. David Kulivan, a wildlife student at Louisiana State University, waited a couple of weeks after his wild turkey hunting adventure during the spring of 1999 at the Pearl River WMA, but he finally contacted Van Remsen at the Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State University to discuss what he had observed.

He claimed to have observed two Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, one adult male and one adult female, foraging together for about 10 minutes. Although he had a camera with him, he claimed he was too much focused on observing the birds to move an inch from his hunting position. After several hours of interviews, Remsen concluded that the details in Kulivan’s report were the most solid evidence he had heard in 22 years of keeping track of information to suggest Ivory-billed Woodpeckers are still extant (Williams 2001, Gallagher 2005).

  Appendix E.

Alabama (#’s where indicated are cross-referenced to Figure 6 in Tanner), subregions: (A) FL Panhandle, FL-AL, (B) Lower Tombigbee-Alabama-Mobile rivers, AL, (C) Upper Tombigbee River, AL-MS, (D) Pascagoula River and coastal Mississippi, MS, (E) Pearl River, MS-LA

1850-1859 (B-1) Near the Alabama River and Selma, Dallas County, AL; around 1850 (#6; two specimens now unaccounted for, but two specimens in Hahn dated “abt. 1850” may refer to these at the collection in Kessel, Germany) 

1860-1869 (B-2) Tombigbee River, Marengo County, AL (Tanner mistakenly listed MS); 1865 (#5; specimen now unaccounted for) 

1870-1879 None 

1880-1889 (A-6*) Blackwater River, FL (two specs.); March 1883 (Hahn; Tanner did mention this report but did not know location nor the
date) (B-3) Cypress Slough, 10 miles west of Greensboro, Hale County, AL; 1886 (#4; specimen now unaccounted for) (B-4) Wilcox County, AL;
1889 (#7) (C-1) Monroe County, MS; 1885 (#1) (C-2) Crump Springs, Lamar County, Buttahatchie River, AL; 1886 (#2) (C-3) Clay County, MS; 1885
(#3) (E-1) Near Bay St. Louis, MS; 1885 (#9) 1890-1899 (D-1*) Mississippi City, Harrision County, MS (two specs.); March 1893 (#10; Hahn 1963 also lists a specimen taken in April 1893 included in total
here) 

1900-1909 (A-1) Conecuh Swamps, north of Troy, Pike County AL; 1907 (#8; specimen now unaccounted for) (D-2) Big Black River, MS (one pair reported by M. Vaiden); 1908 (Jackson 2004, USFWS 2007)

 1910-1919 None 

1920-1929( D-3) Pascagoula Swamp, Jackson County; December 1921 (#11) 

1930-1939 (A-2) Escambia River, FL; 1936 (Weston 1965, Stevenson and Anderson 1994) 1940-1949 (A-3) Perdido River, FL; 1945 (Weston 1965, Stevenson and Anderson 1994)

 1950-1959 (D-4) About 30 miles north of Meridian, MS (B. Chauncey); 1953 (Moore 1954, Jackson 2004) (E-2) East side of Pearl River, adjacent to lock #1, St. Tammany Parish, LA, Hancock County, MS (one male foraging on sweet gum, by J. Merritt); October 1955 (USFWS 2007) 

1960-1969 (A-4) Eglin Air Force Base near Yellow River, FL (two birds seen Boiling Creek; B. Brown and J. Sanders reported to Dennis); August 1966 (Jackson 2004) (D-5) Leaf River swamp (1 mile north of US Hwy 98), Perry County, MS (2 seen briefly in “big gum” trees); December 1960 (USFWS 2007)

 1970-1979 (C-4) Noxubee River, near junction with Tombigbee River, Sumter County , AL (possible f lyby by J. Jackson); March 1973 (Jackson 2004) (D-6) Near where Black Creek joins Pascagoula River, Jackson County, MS (one possible heard “kenting”
but never seen by R. Sauey and C. Luthin); January 1978 (Jackson 2004)

1980-1989 (D-3) West side of Pascagoula River, north of Vancleave, Jackson County, MS (two birds in a pine by M. Morris); February 1982 (Jackson 2004) (E-2) Pearl River, St. Tammany Parish, LA (a male observed one year, a female the following year, both by N.
Higginbotham); 1986, 1987 (Steinberg 2008) 

1990-1999 (E-2) Pearl River, St. Tammany Parish, LA (a pair reported seen for 10 minutes by D. Kulivan while turkey hunting; extensive followup searches in subsequent years unsuccessful); April 1999 (Jackson 2004) 

2000 -2009 (A-5) Choctawhatchee River, FL (multiple visual and auditory encounters by many observers, including many recordings of putative kents and double-knocks and a very poor video); 2005-2007 (Hill et al. 2006, Hill 2007) (E-2) Pearl River WMA – Stennis Space Center, St. Tammany Parish, LA, Hancock County, MS (multiple sightings, several very poor but at least one suggestive video in 2006 of a large woodpecker, possibly lacking red in the crest; a more recent video of a woodpecker in flight in 2009 was determined to be a Red-headed woodpecker, a 2008 video is still undergoing review by M.
Collins and others); 2000, 2005-2009 (USFWS 2007; Collins 2005-2009

Summary, by this author, of  USFWS Recovery Plan, Alabama Information

1850-1859 Near the Alabama River and Selma, Dallas County, AL

1865 Tombigbee River, Marengo County, AL (Tanner mistakenly had MS)

1886 Cypress Slough, 10 miles west of Greensboro, Hale County, AL;

1886 Crump Springs, Lamar County, Buttahatchie River, AL

1889 Wilcox County, AL

1907 Conecuh Swamps, north of Troy, Pike County AL

1973 J. Jackson, Noxubee River in Alabama just across the Mississippi state line. This is just a few miles southwest of Panola, AL. Aerial map review (2025) shows it is now fragmented river bottom flowing east to the Tombigbee River which, in that 5-mile stretch at least, is dominated by silviculture. Jackson saw what could have been an Ivory-billed Woodpecker flying ahead of him and away, low over open water. 


Draft USFWS - Recovery Plan for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker 2007, Section on the Original Alabama Range and Changes

Some of the areas mentioned above no longer have any carrying capacity for Ivory-bills. The areas should be examined with aerials and ranked for possible ground truthing and then surveying, if applicable.  

 The Past - Post 1944

After 1944 there have been several claims of sightings. They are listed in the 2007 Draft Recovery Plan as follows: 

The Present  There has not been any modern evidence presented for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker's recent existence in Alabama to my knowledge.  The species has been called extirpated for decades without any formal field work completed. 

The late (2017) Bill Pulliam examined aerials with Ivory-billed occupancy in mind and made some comments on Alabama. Bill was an expert ecologist, ornithologist, etc. Bill worked tirelessly to promote eBird, in his home state of Tennessee and beyond. Bill’s passing was a huge loss to the Tennessee birding community, and other groups.

Bill wrote:

SUMMARY
Very rough (and generous) totals of the potential habitat for each state (in square miles). These are just eyeballed from the maps, please do not get me in trouble by citing them as actual firm numbers!

TX: 500
AR: 1500
LA: 2000
TN: 300
MS: 700
AL: 500
FL: 2500
GA: 1000
SC: 1500

All states pooled: about 10,000 square miles


General areas that have 300 square miles or more of habitat that is interconnected or at least close together:

Ouachita-Saline (1000 sq. miles)
Big Cypress (800)
Atchafalaya (700)
Winyah Bay basin (700)
Appalachee Bay - Suwannee (600)
Big Woods (500)
Mobile-Black Warrior-Alabama (500)
Altamaha basin (500)
Pearl (400)
Congaree-Santee (400)
Appalachicola (300)

A couple of interesting things... Most (though not quite all) of the primo-suspected Ivorybill areas are on this list. One might infer from this that it takes an area including about 300 square miles of fairly continuous swampland to support the species. This would include a lot of secondary habitat. This would not mean that it takes this much for an individual bird; but it might imply that it takes this much to support the species so it can persist year-to-year in the area. Very speculative, I am the first to admit. Again please do not get me in trouble by citing this as though it were "Fact from an Expert!"

Also rather important -- nearly half of these areas have received little if any attention. Two of the top four may have never been "searched" at all.

-Bill Pulliam

--

And he wrote:

ALABAMA

Though it almost never gets mentioned, there is at least one big beautiful area here that definitely needs attention. I've divided it in to three pieces, but all three are contiguous:

1. Black Warrior River below Tuscaloosa county to its confluence with the Alabama. Extensive and rather wide in places, particularly along the Greene/Hale county line, and where Choctaw, Marengo, and Clarke counties all come together. The lowermost portion near the confluence (southern Washington and Clarke counties) is quite broad and impressive.

2. Alabama River below Miller's Ferry lock and dam to the Black Warrior confluence. Narrower except at the lowermost reach, but continuous and long.

3. Upper Mobile river from the confluence to above I-65. A very broad swamp which in combination with the lower parts of the two areas above forms an area of continuous bottomland forest up to 15 miles wide in extreme southern Clarke, southeastern Washington, extreme northeastern Mobile, northwestern Baldwin, and extreme southwestern Monroe counties.

Farther east in Alabama are three areas that are the upstream tips of swamps whose major portions are in Florida:

4. Conecuh River below Brewton

5. Yellow River below highway 65

6. Chocktawhatchee River below Wicksburg

- Bill Pulliam

Bob Harrison of Alabama, a long-time searcher for Ivory-bills, claims ~ 9 Ivory-billed encounters but some or all of these encounters may have been in Arkansas. In 2006 Harrison, a wildlife photographer and then an Oakwood College professor credited as one of the co-discoverers of the ivory-billed in Arkansas, thought there was still a chance the bird could be in Alabama (The Huntsville Times, 2006; al.com, 2006).

In the January-February issue of Birdwatcher's Digest, 2006, Harrison said he thought Ivory-billeds might be hanging on in other Southern swamps. In Alabama, he mentioned the
Tensaw Delta north of Mobile Bay and the Pea River as possible areas to search.

Over the decades, the compilers of official state bird checklists have understandably moved the Ivory-billed into the extirpated or extinct category. The keepers invariably rely on the lack of reports, or credible reports, or dismiss credible reports as mistakes over the decades, to feel comfortable with this designation. Is this conclusion based on science, such as any formal point surveys, or organized surveys, for example? No.

It relies on common sense which is a bias that occasionally leads to mistaken and premature conclusions; there are innumerable examples of errors in varied disciplines when relying only on strong feelings.  

Rarely has the Ivory-billed been observed during informal outdoor activities, including birding. But several, post 1944 ambient visual encounters have occurred. Two of the more infamous ambient sightings are David Kulivan’s 15 minute observation of a pair while turkey hunting in the Pearl River WMA, LA in 1999 and Gene Sparling’s 2004 long glance, while kayaking in the Big Woods, AR.  A noteworthy ambient report by naturalist, author and birder John Terres occurred in Homosassa Springs, FL in 1955.  

The detection rate utilizing formal, IBWO centric, USFWS and Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) point survey methods has produced acoustical encounters at a rate much higher than ambient sightings. National Biodiversity Parks, Inc. (NBP) has surveyed 670 points over several years and had 17 acoustical encounters and one sighting.  Subtracting out the 20 control points in New Jersey, gives a 2.6% (17/650) detection rate via NBP’s anthropogenic double knock (ADK) survey method. The Ivory-billed has a reasonable but low detection rate per survey point even with an IBWO centric, ADK survey method. However adjusting for the large home range of an IBWO pair the detection rate is reasonable.

The historical literature concluded that in known and occupied IBWO habitat there is one IB pair per 6 or 10 square miles;  average = 8 square miles/pair.  NBP’s ADKs method was measured via radio communication to acoustically cover a ¼ mile square area per ADK.  To acoustically survey all of an Ivory-bill pair’s idealized range, 32 ADK points are needed.  The expected Ivory-bills that heard one or more of the 650 ADKs  points is 41.  NBP had 17 acoustical encounters giving a 41% detection rate; this is an acceptable detection rate. 

The species is wary, per some, but not all older historical reports. However, all modern reports state the bird is very wary. Microevolution driven by range wide, heavy hunting pressure in the 19th century on Ivory-bills had rapidly changed the behavior of the remaining birds by the 20th century. Per historical and modern reports the species was observant. Searches for Ivory-bills require careful planning, staffing and execution. 

Top areas to search for Ivory-bills in Alabama according to NBP's field data and ranking model: 

ADD ADD see NBP files

In 2023 Alabama state biologists were contacted to see how they determined the Ivory-billed was extirpated per the Alabama state checklist. It was confirmed there had been no formal or scientifically based survey performed in Alabama for Ivory-bills. Therefore, it is not known if there are any Ivory-bills in the state although we do think the species is close to extinction in Alabama and the USA.

There is some interpretive confusion between the last sighting and last specimen amongst state biologists. The personnel were courteous and professional. In an email below it's evident that IBWO sightings without the taking of the bird for a specimen evidently delegates the few, post 1907 sightings to not worth mentioning in the opinion of some of these scientists:

"The last known observation of Ivory-billed in Alabama was in 1907." 

This may be a manifestation that most natural resource departments share; they concentrate on fish and game species and without a specimen it's all just another tale about the monster bass that got away.

However, the state was far from completely logged over by 1907; it was possible for a few forest interior birds to eke out an existence without being seen by a "crowd" or shot. Skeptical dogma set in motion the Mason Spencer shooting of an Ivory-billed in 1932. The Singer Tract was only 170 miles from Alabama; unproven skepticism that the bird existed doesn't end at state lines or after 1940.

Underestimating the difficulty of finding this bird, with a large pair range, even when there, continues to this day.

By 1850 a large, east to west swath of central Alabama was already partially logged over. By 1926 about 40 forested areas of 25,000 acres each existed per USDA data (see below). In the 1930s Tanner briefly visited a few pertinent IB forests of Alabama and found them cutover. Tanner missed counting 12 birds in Mississippi, alive in the late 1930s.

The 40 forested Alabama areas, totaling, 1,000,000 acres of virgin forest that stood until at least 1926, likely held IBs in Alabama past the "last confirmed" sighting of 1907.

Did these forty, 25,000 acres areas of virgin forest in Alabama have any Ivory-bills after decades of post Civil War poverty and associated subsistence hunting? The many rifle wielding outdoorsmen moved interstitially between the cotton and tobacco fields and into the shaded forests; some of them went hungry if bloodied fur or feathers didn't reach the pot.

          

1926 Virgin Forest 1,000,000 acres Alabama

Email response from Alabama to questions:                          

From: Alabama DCNR
Sent: Friday, September 1, 2023 11:15 AM
To: National Biodiversity Parks <; GOV>
Subject: RE: Ivory-billed Woodpecker ALABAMA

Historically, Alabama has conducted symposiums to bring together experts covering each taxa group, birds included, periodically to address rare and endangered animals in Alabama and to assess their status, provide management and conservation measures for those species, and to review species lists for the state.

The first of this type symposium was conducted in 1972, with a follow up a few short years later with a second publication coming out in 1976. At both of these meetings, Ivory-billed Woodpecker was discussed. The last known observation of Ivory-billed in Alabama was in 1907. Expert and well-known ornithologists of Alabama came together and agreed on the language that you see in the attached species accounts, that it was ‘highly doubtful if any Ivory-billed Woodpeckers occur in Alabama’ and ‘The Ivory-billed Woodpecker may now be extinct’.

In the 40+ years since these publications, many trained ornithologists have spent time throughout the state and significant time down in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta region, where one would suspect an Ivory-billed Woodpecker to be if there are any in the state, and have not heard or seen any signs of the species, or any indication that would lead us to change the status of the bird in Alabama.

We have not gotten any credible reports of IBWO in Alabama in the time that I have been with the state, since 2010, that would cause us to adjust the current status of the bird in Alabama.

 Nongame Wildlife Program Coordinator

 

Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries

64 N. Union Street, Suite 584

Montgomery, AL 36130
- - - - - 

Results of years of advanced point survey data for Ivory-bills by NBP. Exact locations removed. 

Survey Method Comments

Any brief, formal surveying in Alabama done by Cornell University (CLO, Mobile Team) per the Ivory-billed Recovery Plan was poorly designed.

All the Ivory-billed Mobile Team data utilizing anthropogenic double knocks (ADKs) in the SE USA circa 2006 –09 is suspect; it likely produced false negatives by alerting or driving away IBs before they were detected. It should not be used as evidence by the USFWS, any entity, or anyone to declare Ivory-billed absence vs presence in any surveyed areas of Alabama or elsewhere.

Cornell University (CLO, Mobile Team) utilized survey methods that erroneously extrapolated the vigorous response rate of a territorial and non-hunted congeneric, the Pale-billed Woodpecker, to an assumed response rate of Ivory-bills. C. principalis is not territorial and was incessantly hunted sometimes by imitating and/or following the most consistently knocking individual and shooting any bird encountered for a hundred years. 

As a formally designated federal breeding bird surveyor utilizing well established USFWS methodologies National Biodiversity Parks, Inc. (NBP) used a different ADK method, getting results that were 300 % or more effective in eliciting Ivory-billed' responses than CLO's Mobile Team.  M. Lammertink (CLO) was contacted when it was discovered that CLO had been doing 14 ADKs in 6 minutes compared to NBP’s designed and approved, 2-4 ADKs in 6 minutes. 

NBP has the largest unpublished IBWO field data set for ADK responses (~ 670 data points acoustically covering over 130 square miles of good to excellent IB habitat) from 3 states and a separate control state that had no Ivory-bills. We have had Ivory-bills respond within 40 miles of SE Alabama. 

NBP's zoologists have been to Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, etc. over 30 times. Pale-billeds, etc. are embarrassingly easy to "get knocking". 

Hypothetically if we collectively hunted and shot every Pale-billed for one hundred years the remaining birds would not be liberally knocking. The literature has historical accounts of subsistence hunters or Ivory-billed collectors hearing DKs or even producing ADKs in order to locate, kill or try and kill IBs. Microevolutionary mechanisms impacted modern behavior of IBs in regard to the frequency of their knocking and kenting; the withering and unfortunate selection pressure of hunters/collectors eliminated birds that signaled excessively. 

As it was inherently obvious 20 years ago to some, it certainly has been confirmed that Ivory-bills are wary animals; forcing 7 ADKs into a minute and then another 7, five minutes after, likely repels or warns IBs that a predator is near, or at best, that the survey knocks are not being produced by a real or normal Ivory-billed. 

The disruptive, super stimuli, ADK method (CLO/USFWS 2004 method) should not be utilized for modified Ivory-billed point surveys.  

Position of The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources of Alabama on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker

The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources of Alabama follows the Alabama Ornithological Society's (AOS) official state bird list.

The AOS list is as follows:  

 Extinct/Extirpated Species

Pigeon, Passenger Woodpecker, Ivory-billed N Parakeet, Carolina Warbler, Bachman's N

 Total Species: 455

The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources of Alabama IBWO information

SCIENTIFIC NAME:

Campephilus principalis

 

STATUS:

Extirpated. Historical breeder. Listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

 

HABITAT:

Was found in virgin cypress and bottomland hardwood forests.

 https://www.outdooralabama.com/woodpeckers/ivory-billed-woodpecker

 

Geoff Hill PhD, is an ornithologist with Auburn University, Alabama. Hill was a co-author of a peer- reviewed paper on the evidence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in the Panhandle of Florida (2007) only an hour's drive from Alabama. Hill is aware of Alabama's pertinent IBWO habitat as an established field birder in the state. His well-educated opinion is that the Ivory-billed may be in Alabama.

Here are some of his comments from a recent interview:  

Choctawhatchee River, Florida  

"How possible is it that the ivory-billed woodpecker could make a reappearance?"

 

"Since ivory-billed woodpeckers are still flying around forests, at least in Florida and Louisiana and probably in Alabama and Mississippi as well, I would say that it is just a matter of time."

Hill said there’s been no recent evidence of the ivory-bill in Alabama, but areas in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta could be an ideal habitat if the bird were to make a recovery. He also said:

 

“If they are recovering, there’s plenty of habitat for them now,” he said. “The Apalachicola River system, the Choctawhatchee, the Conecuh River system, and the Mobile-Tensaw Delta are just huge wetland habitats for those birds. So, if they are able to reproduce, and their populations aren’t so small that they’ve lost all their genetic diversity, they have plenty of room to come back into.”

Ivory-billed Comments by G. Hill

 

Hill has always been a bit "forgiving" or "optimistic" on the exact type of forest habitat that the Ivory-billed needs to increase its numbers. Regardless, NBP believes there is a small chance that Ivory-bills can be occasionally breeding in very low numbers in Alabama. Ivory-bills have almost certainly been using the state to search for food, mates or appropriate breeding habitat post Singer Tract.  

The Future -- Ivory-billed Woodpeckers may or may not be extirpated in Alabama. Regardless of the reasons for the assumption of extirpation the species is important to Alabama which is known for its biodiversity. One of the state's prestigious scientists from its premier university, who has direct Ivory-billed field experience proposes the species may be still gracing the state.

 Hill of Auburn University Ivory-billed Book

The Ivory-billed has obvious value to outdoor recreationists of many types. Just knowing Ivory-bills are in a state or riparian corridor stimulates ecotourism and brings economic benefit to outdoor centric businesses that need customers and visitors. Birding is a growing outdoor activity stimulating hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity. 

The Ivory-billed has economic value to rural communities; the species is not an impediment to the timber industry, or hunters, if stakeholders agree that cooperative management for this species can be agreed to. NBP has developed low impact, inexpensive methods to address this specie's needs.

As an ecological basis for economic value Ivory-bills may be more valuable than has been discussed. Increasing their numbers could have modern forestry benefits. SE USA forest productivity could be 5 to 10% higher when a state's biodiversity includes a healthy population of Ivory-bills. However it's realized by most that the recovery of the Ivory-bill has a small chance of success; regardless certain actions should take place. 

Ivory-billeds had to "break into" the seemingly crowded Picidae avifauna of the SE USA. Evolving from the parent Imperial Woodpecker, which had the prerequisite bill and body size to access the phloem and cambium feeding invertebrates earlier than any potentially sympatric Picidae species; the IB fit an open niche.

A Imperial Woodpecker B Ivory-billed Woodpecker C Pileated Woodpecker 

The phloem and cambium, under the bark, of a stressed, damaged or dying tree are relatively rich in carbohydrates and proteins. The Ivory-bills  access these xylophagous invertebrates under the bark sooner than many other species of woodpeckers, other animals, or smaller species can. 

The competitive exclusion principle, if applicable, predicts that an open niche needs to be present and then exploited to grow species richness in a biotic community. The Imperial Woodpecker had the prerequisite morphology that led to the successful speciation into the northern Campephilus clade. One million years ago, soft and hardwood trees from Proto-Texas to Proto-Alabama and elsewhere were being debarked ~ one to three years earlier than any sympatric Dryocopus could accomplish the feat.

Once some bark is removed from a trunk more cambium is exposed, and the more cellulose dominant part of the heartwood is eventually completely available to the community of fungi, bacteria, insects, woodpeckers and mammals to continue the decay process.

Ivory-bills accelerated the tree to soil cycle by several years, increasing forest productivity. More efficient SE US forests can potentially be worth billions of dollars more per annum. The past or potential economic benefits of a healthy Ivory-billed population have likely been overlooked by our natural resource managers; they are not trivial. Unfortunately it's likely too late to restore the specie's advantageous impact to forest productivity for multiple reasons. The Ivory-billed still has substantial presence value. 

NBP's scientists have been carefully examining the literature and habitat aerials of Alabama. Our point survey methods have detected Ivory-bills in a matter of weeks.

We recommend that an actual scientific method be researched, proposed and enacted to explore a few, specific areas of the state for Ivory-billeds. Only advanced, field-tested methods designed for this species can yield valid information that serves the citizens and outdoor enthusiasts that enjoy the natural resources of Alabama.  

Raw Data and resources below

Sunday, March 12, 2006
Huntsville Times

As winter recedes, crews of birdwatchers, both amateur and
professional, are still scouring the Big Woods swamps of
eastern Arkansas for the ivory-billed woodpecker.

Closer to home, some natural questions arise: Did the
ivory-billed woodpecker ever live in Alabama? If so, where
- and when? And could a bird that still exists just one state
away also still exist in Alabama?

The ivory-billed did, indeed, occur in Alabama, mainly in
the southern pine and hardwood swamps of the coastal
plain. But one portion of its range extended into northwest
Alabama, along the Buttahatchee River, a tributary of the
Tombigbee.

When? The last confirmed sighting of the ivory-billed in
Alabama occurred "about 1907," according to Arthur H.
Howell in his 1924 book "Birds of Alabama."

The time and place - in the Conecuh swamps north of Troy -
were related to Howell by C.W. Howe, a trapper.

Howe was certain about his encounter for one simple
reason: When he saw the bird, he shot and killed it.

By the time of his book, Howell wrote, the ivory-billed had
"undoubtedly" disappeared from Alabama. Indeed, since
Howe's kill of 1907, there have been no accepted sightings.

So you have to go back before Howell to records from the
19th century:

In 1838, English naturalist Philip Henry Gosse lived and
taught school for eight months in the community of Pleasant
Hill, about 18 miles south of Selma in Dallas County. Two
decades later, when he had become a prominent figure in
British science circles, Gosse published "Letters from
Alabama, Chiefly Relating to Natural History."

Gosse wrote of his encounters with the ivory-billed in the
woods of Dallas County. The pair of birds he had come
across, he wrote, were "rapping some tall dead pines, in a
dense part of the forest, which rang with their loud notes."

In describing the bird's call and plumage, Gosse clearly
knew the difference between the ivory-billed and the
pileated woodpecker.

In 1891, in an article in The Auk, the journal of the
American Ornithologists' Union, Edwin M. Hasbrouck
surveyed the status of the ivory-billed throughout its
historical range. And that range, Hasbrouck concluded, was
rapidly shrinking as habitat disappeared.

Hasbrouck's essay contains one short paragraph about
Alabama. He told of individual birds being "taken" in 1865
in Marengo County and on the Black Warrior River near
Greensboro the following year. Hasbrouck also noted the
reported 1886 sighting on the Buttahatchee River at Crump
Springs and a nesting bird in 1889 in Wilcox County.

That's about it. In 1942, in James T. Tanner's exhaustive but
readable "The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker," Tanner checked
out the locations mentioned by his predecessors, but in
Alabama he found nothing.

By 1960, when Thomas Imhof's "Alabama Birds" was
published, there was little to do except restate the earlier
records and reports.

What about today?

Bobby Harrison, the wildlife photographer and Oakwood
College professor credited as one of the co-discoverers of
the ivory-billed in Arkansas, thinks there's still a chance the
bird could be found in Alabama.

In the January-February issue of Birdwatcher's Digest,
Harrison said he thinks ivory-billeds may be hanging on in
other Southern swamps. As for Alabama, he mentions the
Tensaw Delta north of Mobile Bay and the Pea River as
possible candidates.

The ivory-billed woodpecker in Alabama? I think it's a long
shot, but in 30 years of birdwatching I've learned there's a
very big difference between the unlikely and the truly
impossible. We hope for the former - and prepare for the
latter.

John Ehinger's Birdwatching column appears monthly on
the Outdoors page.


© 2006 The Huntsville Times
© 2006 al.com All Rights Reserved.

author :  A recollection of at least a two party Ivory-billed observation came out publicly many years after the sighting in SE Alabama by what should be credible and experienced observers. The event seemed to have been acknowledged between the parties within hours of the sighting.  At least one of the parties is known to Chuck Hunter (USFWS) and the event occurring before the Kulivan sighting was just chalked up to being and Ivory-billed or very odd Pileated with no party willing to go much farther due to all the hassles with seeing and reporting an “extinct bird” circa 1995.  


-----

On 3/5/2025 11:30 AM, :

Thanks Fred.  

Wasn’t too excited by the description of flight for the Sykes, nor were there any definitive field marks reported (just seemed larger than a Pileated).  But yes the Styx River is one I have wondered about all of these se AL-FL Panhandle corridors connecting more or less with each other.  

As for riparian bottomland forests being cut over, most all of them have where reports have come from, so not sure that is a criterion to use for suspecting Ivory-bill presence vs. absence.  And I don’t reject the notion that adjacent uplands may be used as well.  

Still a ways to go on the “magnum opus”, but got most of the historical information in some sort of logical order.

Post 2000 is still a big work in progress.

As for the Widner/Ashe sighting, details were a lot of white in the wings and flew direct and powerful, was not a normally flying or plumaged Pileated.

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 5, 2025, at 3:54 AM, N



Yes hello Chuck.   I do have a 2024 alleged AL sighting but at this point it's weak from the Styx River (appropriate metaphor for perhaps the waning years of the IBWO, per Roman beliefs) Southwest Alabama. I don't think it's anything but they were given my name by others. Lets see if he is serious and reaches out...then back to you from me.

I've reached out to several people now and read all the literature I can, I have contacted Alabama natural resources; since 2010 (and before) they have not heard any reports. I looked at all the Hasbrouck Tanner Hunter appendix 8 records and cross-referenced I don't see anything you're missing or anything I could add except this Styx River vague but actual  lead. On Styx it is in my attached draft map----the inside the red line indicates my draft interpretation of the Alabama pertinent area naturally includes some of Florida to get a more holistic look at what could be occurring or what is potential.  Amazingly this could be 400K acres including the Choctaw.  My aerial impression is that the Choctaw is a superior part of this 400K followed by Mobile.  I have no idea what Sykes was seeing and then saying that the Choctaw was not that good in ~ 2007. I did ~ 80 miles by canoe and foot HAD BIRDS.....saw 6 people over a week.  Spoke to locals and game wardens, showed them my badge, bonded a bit --they knew there were 2 species peckers in there.   

In AL, other select areas there's a small chance that we're seeing a Pearl like successional situation in that the Pearl and Alabama were logged early and then the birds may have come back a bit earlier than another area that was logged later. Unfortunately Alabama especially in the Mobile riparian corridor there's been repeated logging and the certain 120,000 areal area is actually only containing 60,000 acres of forest. I have noticed a correlate with the width of the wooded riparian corridor and IBWO occupancy preferred by IBWO and the Mobile is very wide. About 5 mi wide goes 15 mi north then slimmer. this is good but again there's logging. a behavioral correlate must also be discussed if the logging was earlier and the state's population was greatly reduced only to have immigration of birds from other areas------- then the late 20th century 21st century birds with a 500-year lineage in AL of females will panmix with the incoming males and modern AL birds will be exceedingly wary even for IBWO .  More of a hypothesis than theory.  Regardless even with average wary birds you need top people with top methods, top ears with decadal experience in audio surveys, and all SE calls, to get IBWOs properly assessed for presence. The CLO AR methods, Mobile team idea, the European in charge, methods,  more = false negatives.

Is the book done?    

Did Dennis AL others see as far as actual field marks?  

more will send you as I get it

   

On 3/4/2025 6:53 PM, wrote:

I don’t have anything for Alabama either since the Conecuh report, and nothing before since 1907 (interestingly along the Conecuh River upstream near Troy).  Are you aware of any credible reports I seem to have missed?

Like I said, at least Dennis is a very good observer and while I don’t know the other three, the one he mentioned saying to him at his retirement party remembering the ivory-bill they saw.  I actually was listening in and heard that, and I knew Dennis had an encounter by that time, but didn’t know any details.  Turns out that fellow is (I think still) the Deputy Regional Forester for the Southern Region of the USDA Forest Service.  I asked Dennis if he ask him if it would be okay for me to interview him, but haven’t made that connection yet. I doubt I would get any new details, but that is equivalent in my book to having Dan Ashe announce in an off-handed but still significant way about his encounter with Dennis Widner.  Dennis definitely did not want anyone to know while he was still a deciding official and not too keen after he retired, but he loosened up a lot finally after much of the hoopla had died down and was okay with me knowing about it (and that I would likely treat the report on some way).

The other “new” old report that emerged in that FB post was from a colleague now working with Puerto Rican Parrots who told me about someone I actually worked closely with, also during the 1990s, while they were conducting wildlife surveys on Big Island within the batture on the Arkansas side.  My present colleague, Tom White, was doing bear studies, while Winston Smith working also for the USDa Forest Service (Southern Hardwoods Lab) was working as part of broader network of folks fie-tuning point count protocols.  As Tom tells the story, Winston came in from the field one-day and said he saw an Ivory-bill.  Tom I suppose thought he was joking (or nuts), but we agree that Winston did not have that kind of a sense of humor and he was a really good observer.  Winston retired long ago, and I lost touch, hope he is still around and can perhaps fill in some details.  I have another friend, who is actively searching still, and who also was close to Winston during the 1990s, but I don’t remember him ever mentioning hearing about Winston’s

Report.  He might know if Winston is still active and maybe willing to spill the beans or surprise us with a sense of humor we didn’t know he had.  Regardless, many of us felt that Big Island near the mouth of the Arkansas River and not very far from the south end of White River NWR would have possibly served as a reservoir for Ivory-bills and maybe this 1990s observation supports this possibility.  Unfortunately, Big Island ownership changed direction and eventually changed ownership so I would not know to ask about access though I might know someone who does.  

Back to Alabama, There has (had?) to be Ivory-bills in the Mobile-Tensaw Swamps.  Not far to the west reports in southeast Mississippi during the 1920s and 1950s, and of course J. Jackson’s 1970s report along the Noxubee near the State line.  And then the scattered reports as you well know along the Florida Panhandle into the present Century (some I have serious doubts about as with Weston’s second-hand reports and then the weirdness surrounding the Brown and Sanders’ Eglin report during the 1960s), but I agree there is a pattern of reports in adjacent states, just not Alabama.

I wish I could interview E.O. Wilson as he must have at least heard rumors while growing up in Alabama.

Yep, doing my duty on 5 things each week.  Least of my worries compared to what’s happening to my co-workers and especially the younger staff.

Hope all the major silliness is sliding past you as I suppose your duties as an importation inspector is seen as essential (law enforcement, right?).

Cheers,

Chuck 

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 4, 2025, at 5:38 PM, National Biodiversity Parks <NationalBiodiversityParks@comcast.net> wrote:



Great. When I wrote "  odd that of 4 people  no one would say or discuss the bird was a very odd Pileated at that very moment in jeep. But maybe they did???"

I didn't know when written a day ago  they discussed it was an IBWO that very day as he recalled on your FB account.! When you think of the chronological context (pre Spahr, pre-Kulivan and AR) it  is assuring that they considered IBWO that day and seemed to agree.  Wow a 4 person sighting, but 30 years ago.  Still working on it but can't find any post 1995 sighting in AL yet; still researching though.

One thing you might see come up from me is compelling----in 1928 Howell published Birds of Alabama and states the bird is no doubt extirpated in AL . Yet the 1926 USDA virgin forest map (attached) shows at least 40X 25,000 acres of virgin forest =1,000,000 acres virgin.  Like to know how every bird was gone from a million acres (granted they were disjuncts mostly except for SW AL) without decadal severe subsistence, fob, curiosity  hunting pressure ?  

On your "  Most have not had any repeats, some have, always quick there and gone." Obviously breeding has occurred hundreds of times over last 100 years and we missed about every nest. Meaning they are somewhere in the 10,000 acres pair range in seasonally flooded forest/cypress stands that are close to impossible to get to w/o effort above the average birder and average state/federal biologist.    Did you send in your 5 bulletins like me?  They chased me down today,

On 3/4/2025 9:25 AM, :

Agree overall, but I don't find it odd that they would not discuss the possibibilty of this being an aberrant Pileated, but they were like many at the time (mid-1990s) and still who are professional biologists and foresters that I personally know who have had encounters and just don't want to deal with all the hoopla.  That said, each and every one of them when telling me about their experiences would commit themselves to keeping on the lookout and managing with what we think we know this species is associated with, minimum lots of mature forest, lots of standing recently dead and dying trees.  Most have not had any repeats, some have, always quick there and gone.

In the later comments on that post, I also recognized the connnections with later reports in the Florida pandhandle.

---

From:ent: Monday, March 3, 2025 10:25 PM
To: 
Subject: 

 

Thanks .  So four people saw a possible IB in Conecuh NF?  To me its odd that of 4 people  no one would say or discuss the bird was very odd Pilkeated at that very moment in jeep. But maybe they did???

That Conec NF location is only 50 miles from Choctaw River.......hmm.  In general the whole subject area area could still have some birds.  The area to include Chcatw, Nokuse FL, Shoal River, Yellow Rover and Black water State Park FL. This is all mostly FL though.  In FL lie detectors can be accepted if both parties agree. I am willing to take one for my Choctaw 2007 event......strong distant DK response to ADK and then 2 close kents. Seems meaningless now though.   Was pretty taken back in field at tiem. There were IBs there. 




  On 3/3/2025 :

Hi 

I didn’t have knowledge about the Conecuh NF sighting until after 2010, but even so it wasn’t public knowledge until my friend Dennis Krusac posted it on my FB page.  It was like most sightings very brief as a bird crossed a forest road in front of them during the mid-1990s.  They all saw it, but apparently none of them talked about it at the time.  Only later did Dennis know others in the vehicle thought is was an ivory-bill. I know Dennis well he is an excellent biologist and observer.  But what you see in the post is what he had told me in the past, couldn’t remember where in the NF they were and I haven’t had time to follow up with the other Forest Service professionals.

Dennis Widner (NWR Project Leader) and Dan Ashe (then Chief of the NWRS, later USFWS Director) had their observation in 2000, but it was not made public until Dan retired from the USFWS in January 2017.  Both these and other reports I have become aware of will be treated in an update to the 2010 Appendix E, someday.

Jon Andrew, like me, were not in the know about the details of the Big Woods events until April 2005, though we knew Cornell thought they had some evidence to warrant more thorough search efforts after the spring of 2004.

Hope this helps.



Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 3, 2025, at 6:42 PM,:



This email has been received from outside of DOI - Use caution before clicking on links, opening attachments, or responding.



 Hope all is well.

In the latter stages of an article on Alabama IBWO, a sidetrack but some
will like it.

Person will be in the field in March for weeks. I will update you.

They sends me this: Is there more on the AL sighting? such as sketches,
field notes, anything published?  I would not expect you to leave out a
4 person sighting if suggestive - very solid.  It did not make the (your
Appendix  E ) 2010 IBWO recovery plan.

"A Dec 2024 series of post-1990 sightings in Alabama & in Arkansas made
by biologists. It began with a description of a sighting by the then
superintendent (Dennis Widener?) of the Cache River NWR in Arkansas &
USFWS Directior Dan Ashe who saw the IBWO at the Cache River NWR 2000
allong Bayou Deview,. Jon Andrews in the year 2000, four years before
the Sparliing, Harrison, Gallagher & Co sighting.

Then the FB post pivots to the 1993 (or 1999?) Conecuh NF sighting &
then to another sighting by biologists who were doing a black bear
tracking study on Big Island, Arkansas in the 1990s.


Might be more info about that post-1990 Conecuh NF sighting. There were
4 U.S. Forest Service employees riding in an open jeep who IDed this bird. "


tks 

4/25/25 USDA Biologist Conecuh NF is 86,000 acres of forest in south Alabama that has been  gradually reduced of slash pine and replanted with long leaf pine preferred by the Red-cockaded Woodpecker.  Clear-cut in the 1930s, the forest has an increasing DBH. The forest is managed for Red-cockaded Woodpeckers and other species. Dead snags, not usually used by cockadeds, are however left standing according to their biologist.  

The forest near wetlands such as riverine habitats have large Black Gums, Tupelo, Water Oak, Bald Cypress and Pond Cypress.  The hardwoods have a larger average DBH than the Long Leaf as the latter grow slowly.