Ivory-bill Encounter

A day when extinction took a backseat to hope

By Jim Fitzpatrick

It was a cold but sunny day last April when Cornell Lab of Ornithology video producer David Brown and I set out in the canoe. As part of a search team, we were looking for the "Lord God bird," each of us trying our best to get a picture of this elusive creature. It had been more than a month since anyone had seen the bird, and hopes were dwindling. Already the redbuds were in bloom and the early maples were flowering. Soon, new leaves would make visibility in the forest that much more difficult.

We could see our breath as we pushed away from shore in the predawn twilight. Carolina Wrens and Tufted Titmice were already singing away from virtually every corner of the swamp. Here and there, Wood Ducks exploded from the forest with their loud warning screams echoing through the swamp.

While sitting in his canoe on April 5, 2004, Jim Fitzpatrick saw an Ivory-billed Woodpecker fly straight toward him above the treetops. Photo by Elliott Swarthout/CLO

I finally dropped Dave off on a small island and paddled slowly downstream into the unknown, past an opening in the swamp a mile wide and only about 100 feet long where steel poles held a set of three power lines. Beyond this opening, a narrow winding sliver of a channel wove back and forth through the swamp. False channels forked off at almost every turn. The main channel was only about 6 feet wide; the forest it slid silently through seemed impenetrable. Tupelo trees were everywhere, often so close together that even a canoe wouldn't fit. I held my breath and could feel my heart racing each time I rounded a corner.

An hour went by as I floated quietly through the woods. Suddenly I was out in another lake. At the downstream end was a series of channels to choose from. Each one I tried went on for perhaps a mile or so, then petered out into water too shallow to continue.

Finally, after the third try, I glanced at my watch. It was 11:00 and I was getting hungry, so I made my way to the east shore of the lake where a big log stuck out parallel with the water and about a foot above it. I wedged the back end of the canoe in against some cypress knees and pulled out my day-pack, unzipped it, and began looking for my sandwich, pushing aside my digital camcorder and my 35mm camera.

After locating the sandwich, I thought, "I wonder if I will be able to find the way back?" As I looked up the lake to find the outlet where I had come in, I noticed a large black bird over the treetops flying straight at me. "Wow, that's a big Pileated Woodpecker," I said to myself. "Or is it a crow?" I continued to watch as it swung over the treetops on the far shore. As it crossed behind the top of a large cypress tree I noticed the white in its wing and said to myself, "That's a lot of white for a pileated!" As it cleared the cypress tree and got even closer to me, I realized that I was seeing white along the back edge of the wing in the downbeat position, like a speculum on a diving duck.

All at once I realized the bird I was watching was not bouncing like a woodpecker at all but in a straight power flight like a loon or a goose, and I said to myself, "Oh my God, oh my God, it's the bird! It's an Ivory-billed Woodpecker!" I quickly tried my binoculars hanging from my neck but they were out of focus and I just let them drop. My heart began to race as I realized that in another three seconds the bird would be out of sight beyond the treetops.

As I finally lost sight of it, I grabbed my paddle and shoved off, getting out into the lake with one big push. One voice in my head screamed at me, "Follow it, fast!" The next voice said, "Are you crazy? You'll never catch it." "Follow it!" "No don't!" "Follow it!" "No don't!" By the time I calmed down I had done two complete circles in the middle of the lake.

Finally, I took a deep breath, let out a big sigh, and said, "Come on Jim, get a grip on yourself." So I sat in the middle of the lake and took a GPS reading, and wrote down as many notes as I could think of. I tried calling several people on my cell phone but only got their voice mail. I finally ate my sandwich and thought it over. Then I made an attempt at following the bird's trajectory but again came to a place with too little water to travel.

So I went back and sat in the lake until 2:30, when I decided to get Dave. On my way back upstream, my brother John called my cell phone. I told him the news and he just continued to say, "No way! You saw the bird! You saw the bird!"

April 5, 2004, is a day I will not soon forget. It was a day when for me, extinction took a backseat to hope. We humans have another chance to save a species from disappearing but we need to bring back and preserve forever its bottomland hardwood forest habitat, and we need to respect its need for privacy. Let's just hope we don't love this bird to death. One must be extremely lucky to see this bird. I know I sure was.

Jim Fitzpatrick is executive director of the Carpenter St. Croix Valley Nature Center in Minnesota. His brother, John Fitzpatrick, is director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.

For permission to reprint all or part of this article, please contact Laura Erickson, editor, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY, 14850. Phone: (607) 254-1114. email: lle24@cornell.edu