Ghost Bird Documentary

Just finished watching an excellent documentary on the history, search and politics for the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. Definitely worth watching. Airing several more times on LINK ( DirectTV channel 375)..

Digging up an old thread, What's the general feeling here about their possible existence? I know that a vast majority of their habitat was destroyed in the early and mid 20th century and that a mating pair had a very large territory. But It seems feasible that there were very remote places were it would not have been economical to log that they could have persisted in small numbers and now that regrowth forest are reaching mature sizes they could have repopulated areas that they once inhabited. It seems that more people were searching for Bigfoot 5 years ago than the Ivory Billed woodpecker, and if that much energy had been put into the search we would likely have a pretty definitive answer.

Held out hope with reported sighting in Cuba in the '80s, but think chances now are slim and none.
Don't hurt to hope though.

There were some pretty credible reports from Arkansas and a couple other places a few years ago.

I`ve studied up on those things for a long time and anytime I`m in the woods and swamps (which is a lot) I`m looking. In all this time, other than some suspicious looking bark peeling and one off colored Pileated woodpecker, I haven`t seen anything resembling an Ivory Bill.

Ironically, my late Grandfather, who only had a third grade education and never saw a bird book in his life, told me about "wood hens" and Lord God woodpeckers and the difference in the two. He said the last Lord God he saw was in the mid 1950s, I believe. This was in the Oconee-Ocmulgee-Altamaha River swamps. He didn`t know the real names of these birds, with the wood hen being a Pileated and the Lord God being an Ivory Bill. He also said that in his younger days if one flew by while he was roosting wood ducks, it got shot too. People ate them in those days.

Ponder on that for a spell. Also, read The Grail Bird, by Tim Gallagher. Just my opinion, but I have my doubts about some of the findings in that one.

Have an ornithologist friend who trailed the calls through a part of big cypress NF they were actually on a joint expedition with a few other state agencies, he finally lost it without a sighting but he swears to this day he has no doubt what he heard.

My nephew is a timber dealer in coastal SC. For thirty years he has worked the swamps of SC, from the Savannah area to the area just above Georgetown, SC. He swears they are out there, but hasn't seen one in years. Says he still hears them once in a while if he is way back in the swamp.
He was instrumental in finding Frances Marion's hideout in the Santee. Not too many places between Columbia and Charleston that he hasn't walked. He was also involved in the finding, raising, and using some of the first "drowned wood" in SC.
(But that is a story for another time.)

I'd like to see what he has seen!