[uplifting music]
- JON FREDLAND: To have a species be extinct
and have a second chance to revive it is unheard of.
- JOHN ARVIN: We're going to basically see what we can find
in the way of Ivory-bill signs or even the birds themselves.
[water sloshing]
- NARRATOR: These birding biologists are looking
for a ghost...
the Ivory-billed woodpecker,
a bird thought to have been extinct.
Or is it...
[canoe paddles splash]
In early 2004 along the Cache River in Arkansas,
this video was taken from the seat of a canoe.
- BIRDER: Did you see it?
[computer keys clacking]
- It's flying away now.
- NARRATOR: John Arvin is one of many bird experts
who has analyzed the footage.
- JOHN: When you can see the under wing, you see a
large amount of white on the trailing edge,
separated by a black line of feathers down the center.
These flight patterns appear to show that the bird is in fact
an Ivory-billed woodpecker
as opposed to a Pileated woodpecker.
- NARRATOR: This video, multiple sightings,
and analyzed audio recordings were enough evidence
by experts to declare that the Ivory-bill lives.
- JOHN: It was an incredible frenzy; the whole ornithological
community was just electrified by this.
The bird had been thought extinct for 60 years.
- The Arkansas footage brought a lot of hope,
and it made other states like Texas, get very excited,
cause the chances of that bird being anywhere
in this range are high!
- JOHN: We're going to start in here.
- NARRATOR: So, John Arvin is leading a team of biologists,
including Jon Fredland and Corinne Campbell,
their goal to find the Ivory-billed woodpecker
here in Texas.
The search area covers part of the bird's historic range,
thousands of acres of Bottomland Hardwood Forest
habitat found in the Big Thicket National Preserve
of Southeast Texas.
[Red-bellied woodpecker calls]
- CORINNE CAMPBELL: Red-bellied again!
We're looking for any kind of woodpecker sign,
either scaling,
actually chipping away at the bark looking for grubs for food,
or cavities that it would make a home for the night.
[Pileated woodpecker calls]
- JON: Something really jacked that snag up, it's torn apart.
- CORINNE: We found some scaling that looks like woodpecker work,
it's promising.
- JON: It looks pretty pitted
but it is scaled all up and down!
- CORINNE: Take some footage of it.
- NARRATOR: By the end of the day, the team sees
plenty of woodpeckers,
but no Ivory-bill.
[movie projector clicking]
Intense logging of Bottomland Hardwood Forests in the
late 1800s wiped out most of the Ivory-bills habitat.
[splash]
- CLIFF: The decline started when a lot of these
large forests with large trees were cut down.
- NARRATOR: The only film ever taken of an Ivory-bill
was captured in 1935 in Northeast Louisiana.
- CLIFF: The footage gives us some movement, some life
to this bird and most importantly some voice.
[Ivory-billed woodpecker calls]
- NARRATOR: Massive sound equipment captured the only
calls of the bird ever recorded.
- CLIFF: For the 30s it was cutting edge,
for these guys to have the equipment back then
was remarkable.
[Ivory-billed woodpecker calls]
[Northern Flicker calls]
- NARRATOR: In the search area, there are a total of
eight species of woodpeckers,
including the Northern Flicker,
the Red-bellied,
and the Red-headed.
But the closest look-a-like is the Pileated.
Extremely similar, this makes finding the
Ivory-billed woodpecker a bit of a challenge.
- CLIFF: Look at the back, and there's a white backpack
on the Ivory-billed, yet it's black on the Pileated.
And both birds are crow sized.
So, when you see a crow sized woodpecker with a
white back pack, you should get excited.
But most people are seeing the one with the black back pack
and that's the Pileated.
- NARRATOR: It's now the middle of the search season.
- JON: There it is!
- CORINNE: I see it there!
- NARRATOR: The team hopes some new technology will
help spot an Ivory-bill.
- CORINNE: A cavity was found the last time
we visited this area.
We're putting a video camera up to see if we can
see anything that looks like an Ivory-billed.
- JON: Pull the slack out.
- NARRATOR: This isn't just any camera; it has time lapse
capabilities and is motion sensitive.
- CORINNE: Any bird is most active at sunrise and sunset.
- JON: Green light!
- CORINNE: And it's hopefully going to capture a bird
coming into to roost for the night.
- JON: What do you think?
- CORINNE: Looks pretty good to me.
- JON: All right!
- NARRATOR: At another location...
- JOHN: This black gum right here will probably work for us.
- NARRATOR: John is setting up an Autonomous Recording Unit,
which is programmed to record at sunrise and sunset.
- JOHN: I've been anticipating its arrival for quite some time.
We have a long-time local resident who has reported
activity and we're going to deploy it and see if we
can't pick up some sound.
- CORINNE: What's the easiest way through this mess?
- NARRATOR: The team still has thousands of acres to search.
They hope this new equipment will help
improve their chances.
- JON: We're covering the ground really well.
We're getting into some areas that no one has
ever been to probably before.
Yet, we haven't seen evidence that would support
Ivory-billed being here.
[woodpecker calls]
- NARRATOR: There is one species of woodpecker that
is not extinct, but it is endangered.
The Red-cockaded woodpecker.
- Unlike the Ivory-billed, the Red-cockaded woodpecker
had enough numbers at the time that it was put on the
endangered species list, in that we had something to work with,
something to improve upon, something to increase.
- NARRATOR: Biologist here have a huge nursery of sorts,
as they try to raise more.
- BIOLOGIST: Coming up on the nest tree here.
- NARRATOR: To check on the active tree cavities during the
breeding season, the biologists use what's called a peeper cam.
[whirring]
- BIOLOGIST: Might take a second.
[camera bangs on side of tree]
It's kind of a tough one to get in there.
There we go!
I've got one male with a red crown patch
and we have a female here that has no crown patch on her,
which is good!
Tree 24, three chicks, fifty-footer.
- NARRATOR: Once new chicks hatch, the biologists climb
up to those 40 to 50-foot-high cavities...
- NANCY: How's it going up there, you got em yet?
- NARRATOR: ...to band the birds, to give each new chic
a name and number.
- NANCY: We try to do all the banding and the climbing
within 15 to 30 minutes, because we really don't want
to interrupt the feeding schedule of these nestlings.
- BIOLOGIST: Here you go manager!
- NANCY: Thanks!
Let's see what we got here.
They look about nine days old.
Got their eye's slightly open.
You can see the feathers are starting to come out.
It's going to be the dark blue over mauve.
We color band the birds in case we have a single male
that has its own territory but he doesn't have a mate.
That way we can track down the female and move her to that
single male, and hopefully they will nest the following year.
[Red-cockaded chirping]
- CORINNE: This is a good spot!
- NARRATOR: For the search team, one way to try
and capture a glimpse of the Ivory-bill is to sit
and play some music,
bird music.
- CORINNE: Turn the volume up.
Double knocks!
We use playback to call Ivory-bills in, the idea
being the bird will hear its own species call
and want to come and check it out.
- NARRATOR: And while out alone with their cameras,
they've seen their share of birds.
- I saw a Pileated during the playback, but he didn't seem
to care at all about it.
He just went away working on that snag over there.
Snakes are out again.
Can't say I like that.
Lots of activity once it warms up in the swamp.
[splashing]
[uplifting music]
- NARRATOR: An immense forest.
- JON: Species, Tupelo.
- NARRATOR: A team of biologists
and one bird.
The odds are stacked...
- JON: Some cavities on that tree.
- NARRATOR: But there is always hope.
- JON: Waypoint name, ccc.
- NARRATOR: After almost six months, the team tracked
tens of thousands of acres.
As for the sound recordings from the ARU,
nothing.
And the pictures from the remote camera?
- JON: There's me around the tree.
- CORINNE: It looks like you are posing for it...
ha, ha, ha!
- NARRATOR: It did capture some critters.
- JON: There's a deer!
- CORINNE: I see a shadow?
- JON: That's the deer, yah!
- NARRATOR: But again, no Ivory-bill.
- JON: No, you can't tell what it's doing?
- NARRATOR: So, after a half of year in the Big Thicket,
a ghost is still a ghost.
- There was nothing promising that we found out here
to tell us that the bird is even in this state at all.
- NARRATOR: But like any lost treasure,
it might be hiding just out of sight.
- JON: If there was a bird out there, I mean there is still
a huge chance that it could be and we didn't see it
because it's pretty gigantic area we were covering,
and it would have to rely on a whole lotta luck
if it happened to be where we were.
[music]
- NARRATOR: And all is not lost.
This search brings new energy to the efforts to conserve
and even restore these pristine bottomland hardwood forests
of East Texas.
[uplifting music]