The woodpecker that came back from the dead

The rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker is a find so important that it that it almost defies words, says Alistair Gammell, of Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. "We sadly won't rediscover the dodo, but it is almost on that level."

And Frank Gill, of the National Audubon Society in the United States, says: "It is huge, just huge. It is kind of like finding Elvis."

Others say it is the Holy Grail of birdwatching. But all are agreed on one thing - the confirmed sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker is the greatest ornithological observation in living memory.

The last time anyone had set eyes on this large black-and-white bird was in 1944. But for the past year a select coterie of ornithologists kept secret the fact that they had a video recording of a lone male. And yesterday they revealed that an exhaustive scientific analysis has confirmed the bird in the video was indeed an ivory-billed woodpecker, a species formally known as Campephilus principalis.

"We were excited to find out that we had it on tape and looked at it many times before we concluded that ... it was the woodpecker and undeniably so," said Professor David Lunneau of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Reported sightings of the woodpecker had drawn Professor Lunneau to the huge wilderness area of eastern Arkansas known as the Big Woods. In April last year his patience was rewarded with an invaluable four seconds of footage showing the bird perched on the trunk of a tupelo tree before it flew away.

Professor John Fitzpatrick, an ornithologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who led the investigation, said that there was no doubt the bird in the video recording was the genuine article.

"This is not any old bird," he said. "This is a really special creature. This is America's largest woodpecker, the third-largest in the world - it's spectacularly beautiful. It's legendary, it's mysterious, and it's been a majestic symbol of the old forest of the American South.

"It's powerful and a specialist on very large dying trees and as a consequence of that it's been rare since the mid-1800s and was thought to be extinct as early as 1920 because we completely annihilated our southern forests during that period."

The ivory-billed woodpecker is an imposing bird. It is 60cm from beak to tail with a wingspan of 76cm. Its ivory bill is 8cm long and its feathers a stunning jet black and brilliant white - with a delicate red crest on the head of males.

So dramatic is the ivory-billed woodpecker in flight that it is sometimes called the Lord God Bird because stories are told that when naturalists first set eyes on it, they were often heard exclaiming: "Lord God."

A wildlife artist called Don Eckelberry had been the last person to see one alive - a female living at John's Bayou just before extensive logging in 1944.

Then, at 1.30pm on February 11 last year, amateur birdwatcher Gene Sparling, kayaking alone on a bayou, a tributary of the Cache River in the Monroe County National Wildlife Refuge, spotted an unusual large, red-crested woodpecker, which landed near the base of a tree 20m away. He immediately suspected he had seen an ivory-billed woodpecker. A week later two scientists set off down the same bayou. To their amazement a large, black-and-white woodpecker flew in front of their boat.

"Throughout the 20th century it has been every birder's fantasy but it seemed impossibly remote to catch a glimpse of this bird," Fitzpatrick said. "It's really the Holy Grail for birds. Mysteries remain. We don't know how many birds there are. But the lifespan of large woodpeckers rarely exceeds 15 years, so this bird clearly had a mum and dad that successfully bred sometime in the 1990s or this century."

Conservationists believe that the worst may even be over for the ivory-billed woodpecker because efforts to reforest this part of North America have improved the habitat, and there are now an increasing the number of the naturally decaying type of trees on which the bird depends for food and nesting sites.

Although only one bird has been sighted at any one time - and it may be the same male - scientists believe there may be a sparse colony of breeding pairs in the region. During 7000 hours of search time, there have been 15 sightings and on three occasions ornithologists have heard the distinctive double-raps of the birds as they drum out their display calls to one another.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton said, "Second chances to save wildlife once thought to be extinct are rare and we will take advantage of this opportunity."

Millions of dollars in federal assistance have been promised to protect the bird.

- INDEPENDENT AND AGENCIES