The third-largest woodpecker in the world and the biggest north of Mexico that has been thought to be extinct till 2004 is being sought for once again in Texas.
True, the confirmation of the bird’s existence here would lure biologists, environmentalists and tourists from around the world, but it is really hard to be optimistic with it, as the 20 inches-long bird with a nearly three-foot wingspan was last sought in East Texas more than a century ago – in 1904!
All the best to Corinne Campbell and her two companions, who are on for a tedious winter-long canvass of Texas’ famed Big Thicket, to have a glance of an ivory-billed woodpecker. They are venturing into an often impenetrable swampy jungle choked with thorny vines and prodigious pine and cedar trees.
What sparked interest and curiosity across the South is the woodpecker’s first sighting in generations by Gene Sparling in Arkansas on Feb. 11, 2004.
Biologists subsequently converged on the Arkansas’ bayou area to capture a 4-second video of what they claim to be an ivory-billed.
Though, however, a Scottish scientist said that the bird’s identification from the video couldn’t be certain just this month in a British biology journal article – it seems to have failed to dilute the biologists’ impertinence in the search for the bird.
Photo Credit: AP/Pat Sullivan