Ivory-billed woodpecker eludes latest effort by researchers

~ University biology professor spies nice scenery, but object of two-week search goes unseen.

The only ivory-billed woodpecker Bill Eddleman saw during a two-week search for the rare bird was on souvenirs littering the gift shops in Arkansas.

The Southeast Missouri State University biology professor even brought the bird home -- on a hat, T-shirt and a pair of earrings for his wife.

"It would have been nice to see it, but I wasn't really expecting to," said Eddleman, who recently returned home.

During the last two weeks of his Christmas vacation, Eddleman joined a seven-man crew in the bottomland hardwood forests of the White River National Wildlife Refuge. The crew worked in coordination with Cornell University's lab of ornithology, which is conducting the search for the bird.

Due to a confidentiality agreement Eddleman signed, he can't say if anyone else on the search saw the ivory-billed woodpecker. Details of the search will be released by Cornell in May.

"For me, just seeing some of the forests down there was a great experience," Eddleman said. "There were some pretty spectacular trees."

Based on studies from the 1930s, the ivory-billed woodpecker is only able to survive in habitats such as the bottomland hardwood forests in southeast Arkansas.

A typical day of searching began around 5:45 a.m. for the biology professor and ended after the sun set. Most of the time Eddleman would scan the habitat for the ivory-billed woodpecker.

"We would get dropped off at a place with good visibility and watch for about an hour," he said. "Then we would go on to another place and do the same thing. It was a long day of work, but it wasn't hard."

At sunset the searchers would watch a cavity, or a woodpecker-drilled hole in a tree, to discover if a bird inhibits the hole. Eddleman said ivory-billed woodpeckers drill oval-shaped holes into the trees while other woodpeckers drill round-shaped holes.

The ivory-billed woodpecker, which has mystified researchers for nearly 60 years, was last seen in 1944. But then a kayaker spotted the bird in February 2004 near Brinkley, Ark. -- a small city that has capitalized on the bird sighting.

Eddleman said he had the opportunity to visit Brinkley while on the search and went to a restaurant serving an ivory-billed woodpecker cheeseburger.

"There are a lot of birders heading to Brinkley," he said. In fact, while Eddleman was in Brinkley, he met an Alabama man, who reported the second sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker last year.

Since the initial sighting of the bird in 2004, multiple other sightings have been reported and out-of-focus video footage was taken. An audio recording thought to be the bird's call has also been captured.

jfreeze@semissourian.com