The discovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker in Arkansas in 2005 rocked the scientific and outdoors communities.

    How could a bird that had supposedly been extinct for more than 40 years survive without being noticed by hundreds of thousands of birders and the

researcher community?

    Since then scientists believe they may have discovered another population of these animals in Florida, while skeptics want more concrete evidence than the audio recordings offered for the Sunshine State.   

    After studying the bird since I was in high school, I always believed there was a good chance a few of the elusive birds still existed possibly in Texas. Do they still dwell here in 2008? That's a tough question and one that in all honesty we may never know the answer for.

    Some of the old references to the ivorybill speak of it being a rather nomadic species that moved from food source to food source. The timber practices of the early 20th century could have enhanced this characteristic and forced them into a more nomadic lifestyle. By “nomadic” I do not mean the birds from Florida fly to Arkansas or anything that drastic. However, I do believe birds from the lower Sabine River basin, for example, might range up and down that desolate stretch of river, or over into the Trinity River bottoms 60 miles away.

    It is silly to believe a bird (which, by the way, can fly; I think some scientists forget that) would stay in one area and starve to death when other food sources are within reach.

    Biologist and current head of Shangri-Las Botanical Gardens, Mike Hoke put together a four-day ivorybill research project in the Blue Elbow Swamp area back in 1983. While the team did not find, see, or hear any of the birds, they found several suspect cavities in old trees.

    Other areas ripe for ivorybill research include the Big Thicket National Preserve in Southeast Texas. In fact, veteran birder Art Mackinnon has searched this area periodically since the early 1980s and developed an interesting theory about the survival of the species that correlates with my nomad concept.

    “I started birding in 1978 and quickly became interested in pileated woodpeckers,” Mackinnon said.

    “I ended up coming across James Tanner’s book and was hooked on ivorybills. Working with the National Park Service, I learned about the southern pine beetles and the large areas of dead pine forests they would create. In Tanner’s book, he talked about ivorybills needing a large area to live in and large trees to feed on. I ended up putting two and two together and started going to all the big beetle sites and watching. The Beech Creek unit was a great area; I saw a few things I could not identify."

   “The best area I found was in an oil field north of Silsbee. The area has since been clear-cut. The site was about three miles from the Neches River bottom, and that is a short flight for ivorybills.”

    Mackinnon said there were about 150 to 200 large and dying loblolly pines in this area: “One of the pines about 22 inch diameter had a large oval hold about 35 feet up in the tree. I watched the hold for several months with no sightings. There were several pileateds around, but none of these birds went to the oval hole. In 1982, the tress with several others fell, and I, with Dr. Paul Holcomb from Rice University, cut and took the tree to his lab and took measurements and photos.”

    He could not identify the down feathers from inside the nest cavity. They could be from ivorybills or pileated.

    Mackinnon met John V. Dennis in Wier’s Woods near Lumberton in 1984. Dennis saw ivorybills in the Neches Bottoms in 1965, and made a recording of