Elusive woodpecker draws birders to Arkansas

updated 1:27 p.m. ET Dec. 27, 2005

BRINKLEY, Ark. - Each morning, Sara Barker wakes before dawn, covers herself with camouflage and makes sure she has her compass before heading into the eastern Arkansas swamps. Her quest: the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker.

Dozens of birders have flocked to the wildlife refuges of the Arkansas Delta to follow up on a kayaker's 2004 sighting of a bird so rare it was thought to have become extinct. They hope to obtain a clear video or picture of the bird and then study its behavior.

Barker and fellow scientists from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology plan to comb thousands of acres this winter, while leafless trees allow good viewing, looking for a roost, a nesting hole or any other evidence of the woodpecker's existence. Their days stretch from before dawn to the "magic hour," just before dusk, when the birds are believed to be most active.

"We'll sit in a canoe, quietly, and we'll watch that hole until just after dark," Barker said. "Hoping, hoping that just maybe it's the ivory bill."

And what if, one day, it is?

"I'd probably fall out of the boat," Barker says with a laugh.

The searchers — equipped with Global Positioning System locators, binoculars, digital video cameras and cell phones — call the bird a flying needle in a haystack. This haystack covers 550,000 acres — about 75 percent of the size of Rhode Island.

Their quest was sparked Feb. 11, 2004, when one of the woodpeckers flew over amateur birder Gene Sparling while he was kayaking in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge. It was confirmed in April as the first known sighting of the bird since 1944.

Now, dozens of searchers are sharing one house, while others promise to camp in the swamps for the entire winter. Cornell birder Nathan Banfield, 26, from Montgomery City, Mo., refuses to even go into nearby Little Rock to grab a beer.

"It would be nice to go out and stuff," he said. "But it nags on you if you're taking a weekend off knowing the bird could be there. If I could spend that extra time that maybe would give me that extra chance. You don't know when your three seconds are going to come."

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