Oct. 16, 2005

Finding The 'Lord God Bird'

Ed Bradley Reports On The Rediscovery Of The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

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By Daniel Schorn

Play CBS Video Video Rare Bird Presumed Extinct
"60 Minutes" commentator Ed Bradley spoke with three men who have a high interest in the rare ivory-billed woodpecker, one of the most celebrated birds in U.S. history.

Video Not Extinct After All
The woodpecker naturalists found in the swamps of Arkansas wasn't just rare, it was extinct. Or so scientists thought. Bob McNamara has the story of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker.

An artist's rendering of an ivory-billed woodpecker. (AP)

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(CBS)

Last April, 14 months after the search began, and just before the news was about to leak, the searchers announced that the ivory-billed woodpecker had been rediscovered.

It made the front-page of newspapers all across the country. Virtually overnight, the bird became America’s latest sensation. But some scientists weren’t convinced that the video evidence is scientifically conclusive.

Cornell released audio evidence, culled from some 18,000 hours of recordings from the Big Woods, that may not be conclusive but it believes is compelling.

Russ Charif, a researcher at the lab, played a tape recorded Jan. 29, 2005 in Arkansas, which he says “bears a striking resemblance” to two ivory-billed woodpeckers talking to each other.

That sound has been music to the ears in Clarendon, Ark., the town closest to the sighting, which isn't waiting for the outcome of the scientific debate to cash in on the woodpecker’s return.

Clarendon now calls itself the home of the ivory-billed woodpecker.

This year's annual birding festival was all about the bird. There were even ivory-bill haircuts at $25 a clip.

But all that hoopla is not what matters to Fitzpatrick. “The fact that we've gotten politicians and local people in Arkansas and people in Alaska and people in Florida talking about it, it's because all those people know that this is big. The reason they know it's big, is they've been paying attention to birds.”

Since February 2004, the ivory-billed woodpecker’s existence has been confirmed. But the bird has remained illusive, somewhere in the Big Woods.

So far, only a handful of searchers have seen it and Fitzpatrick isn’t one of them.

“I don't really get frustrated at that. Right now I would love to see this bird. I can't lie at all. I'm so glad that other people have,” says Fitzpatrick. “I mean, I've wept at stories of people describing it. It's an extremely emotional thing, this bird. I could happily go to my grave and not see it if we could find out what's going on and save it.”