We thank everyone who has written to us about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. 

If you would like to share a letter, please write to ivorybill@cornell.edu, or send mail to Anne Hobbs, Communications, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca NY 14850. We regret that because of the volume of mail, we may not be able to respond to all letters or include them on our web site.

Blackwater Brake Memories

 

I just had to write to express my great exhilaration and excitement over the rediscovery of the ivory-bill. This great bird played a wonderful part in my upbringing and the news has brought back blessed memories from my past. In the late fifties, my father, L. A. (“Ham”) Hamilton—a great outdoorsman, conservationist, and birdman—purchased, along with his cousins, Spring Bayou Plantation 12 miles south of Tallulah, Lousiana, in Madison Parish, almost literally across the fence from the Chicago Mill/Singer Tract.

I followed his 6'4", 250-pound frame many a mile through the swamps and hardwood bottoms of that beautiful 3,000-acre paradise after deer, ducks, and turkey. He was, above all, a birdman, and from an early age taught me all he knew about the woods, wildlife, and especially birds. He always believed that the ivory-bill still existed and reminded me continually to keep a watch out for him. From ages 10 to 20 I studied birds diligently and looked constantly for those majestic and distinctive features.

My father is gone now, and I am far away from the place of my youth. This discovery has brought it all back for me and I have been overcome today with deep and inexpressible emotions. While driving through this polluted and crowded city of 5 million people—who will never have the privilege of greeting the dawn from the edge of a blackwater brake in the big timber—I wept over a bird, yes—just a bird, but a glorious one that represents all that is wild and right about the last places in the Old South, and represents for me a father’s life and heritage to his son.

So because of your commitments and efforts, this morning I awoke early and, at least in my mind and heart and memory, stood again on the edge of that blackwater brake looking up through the tall cypresses and whispered, “We found him, Dad…we found him.” May he fly for many years to come and move many other young people to embrace the wild and fulfill the stewardship this majestic bird represents. Keep us posted and be assured we are with you in spirit every step of the way.

With gratitude,
Andy Hamilton, Southwest China

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Still Searching the Skies

 

In 1962 my father thought he saw an Ivory-billed Woodpecker at a hunting camp we own in north Louisiana. We bought this property from Chicago Mill and Lumber Co., which in turn had bought it from the Singer Sewing Machine Co. It was on the Singer Tract that the last sighting of the ivory-bill was recorded in 1944.

The professor of ornithology at Louisiana State University, Dr. George Lowery, was so excited that he and some graduate students made a weekend trip to our camp in February of 1963 to search for it, but they never found one.
I still own that property and every year in hunting season I’m searching the skies and trees for any sign of one, so hearing this news today was like discovering that a long-lost relative had been found.

Thanks for your dedication and work at making sure that this magnificent bird survives.

Michael LaCour
Baton Rouge, Louisiana