Sound was not rare bird, but guns

NEW ORLEANS -- Researchers who thought tapping noises they captured on tape were evidence that a possibly extinct type of woodpecker still survives have had their hopes dampened: The sounds, it turns out, were just gunfire.

The ivory-billed woodpecker is widely believed to be extinct, but a Louisiana State University student's detailed account of a possible sighting in 1999 raised hopes that there are still some around in south Louisiana's Pearl River Wildlife Management Area.

In a search last winter by Cornell University and Zeiss Sports Optics of Chester, Va., a dozen acoustic recording units, or ARUs, were set out to record two to three months' worth of sounds.

Captured on tape were a series of distinctive double-raps, reminiscent of the ivory-billed's distinctive rapping on dead wood.

"Sadly, analysis of the ARU data proved that the sounds were distant gun shots, with reverberations that sounded to human ears like drumming on a hollow snag," Zeiss Sports Optics said in a news release.

Ivory-bills were the biggest woodpeckers in North America. They have been rare since the late 1800s and were last spotted 60 years ago.