Ivory Billed Woodpecker Sighting in Glen Ellyn

Well, at least the skin & feathers of one that was taken as a specimen about 120 years ago!

The DuPage Birding Club welcomed Doug Stotz who gave a very entertaining and informative talk on the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, and the controversy surrounding its recent sightings in Arkansas and Florida.

The club itself is not that different from the Kane County Audubon Society I blogged about prior to this. (It was a bit funny to have back-to-back birding cub meetings!) They meet at the IIT Rice Campus in Glen Ellyn, nearby Butterfield & Naperville Road. The club has about 200 members, mostly over 50 (but a wide age range) and there was probably around 60-75 people at the meeting.

If you don’t know the story, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker was last seen in the wild in the U.S. in 1944, and was thought to be extinct as a result of massive logging and deforestation of their habitat.

Around the year 2000 there were some unconfirmed sighting reports, and some audio evidence was collected in 2002 in the Pearl River region in Louisiana. Then in 2004, a reported sighting was considered credible enough that a team from Cornell University conducted a more exhaustive search.

During this search there were more sightings, and even some video evidence. Not since the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination has a piece of video been as closely scrutinized, and caused so much debate. What you see in the video is a large, blurry woodpecker flying away from the camera.



There is evidence that can be used for both sides of the argument, that this was an Ivory Billed Woodpecker, or just a Pileated Woodpecker, which is very similar, and definitely NOT extinct!

Doug, who is in the “It was an ivory-billed” camp, gave both sides of the argument, and had specimens of both Ivory-Billed and Pileated woodpeckers from the Field Museum for comparison. I have to admit, even though it was just a specimen, it was pretty cool to see this bird up close!