Ivory-bill in the news

An article on the Herald & Review site describes an Illinois birder's visit to Arkansas. David Johnson from Sullivan, Ill., says he saw a possibly female Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

"I was lucky," Johnson said. "I just happened to be looking at the exact spot where the bird took off.

"I'm 100 percent sure it was an ivory. There's nothing else that big that has those markings, and just before that, we had heard it call and rap," he said. "What's ironic about the whole thing is that people spent months looking for it, and we made contact in a few minutes....

"There's no doubt in my mind it was not a pileated. A pileated doesn't have that marking on top, and it's not as big a bird, and this one had two white stripes up its neck. I had about a two-second look at it, and I feel it was a female bird because I did not see a red crest.