St. Lucie Audubon Society

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HART BEAT: EXTINCTION AND RECOVERY

Mary Dodge

The “Lord God Bird” is about to be declared extinct again. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker (above) is referred to as the “Lord God Bird” because supposedly everyone who has ever seen one exclaims “Lord God, look at that bird!” (The Ivory-billed is also sometimes referred to as the “Holy Grail Bird” as finding one is regarded as the Holy Grail of birding.)

And no, I don’t have any photos of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker to share with you, and you will note the picture of the Ivory-billed pair at the top of this column is a painting of the male with it is red crest and the female with its black crest because no one has ever taken a color photo of any Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. In fact, the only photos known to exist are some grainy black-and-white photos taken back in 1935 of a pair at the nest by Arthur A. Allen and of a nestling taken in 1938 by James Tanner, all those photos taken in the very remote Singer Tract of old growth forest in Louisiana, now long gone to timbering.

More recently in April 2004 an Ivory-billed Woodpecker was spotted in Arkansas which prompted an intense search for the bird. During that search, which included over 50 searchers spending up to 14 hours a day in impenetrable swamps, four different searchers on four different days spotted the bird, and from June 2004 to February 2005 there were two more sightings of the bird. In September 2006, another group of ornithologists searching along the Chotawhatchee River in Northwest Florida also spotted an Ivory-billed Woodpecker, but further searches of the area extending into 2009 did not produce any additional sightings. As further evidence of the bird’s existence, during the search, audio recordings were made of the Ivory-billed Woodpeckers distinctive double knock pounding on a tree.

Many doubters of the 21st century sightings of Ivory-billed Woodpecker believe the observers mistakenly saw Pileated Woodpeckers and jumped to the wrong conclusions. Pileated Woodpeckers (photos 2 male, 3 and 4 both females) do indeed superficially resemble Ivory-billed, but the latter are significantly larger and have distinctive white primary feathers, contrary to the Pileated Woodpeckers all black back, and the Ivory-billed has a most distinctive massive ivory-colored bill.

This column was prompted by two articles in the September 30th edition of the Palm Beach Post. The first was the announcement that the U S Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to move the Ivory-billed Woodpecker from the “Threatened” list to the “Extinct” list. The final decision will be made some time after November 29th of this year, and a concerted effort is being made by many ornithologists to prevent that final decision from being made. The second article in the same edition of the Palm Beach Post featured the recovery efforts being made to save the Florida subspecies of the Grasshopper Sparrow (photos 5 and 6) from becoming extinct.

The Florida Grasshopper Sparrow is a non-migratory grassland subspecies that lives year-round in a five-county area of Florida (Glades, Highlands, Polk, Okeechobee, and Osceola counties) and is generally darker than its namesake migratory birds (photo 7) that leave Florida to breed generally from northern Texas to South Carolina and all the way to southern Canada. When these photos of the Grasshopper Sparrows were taken, back in 2007 on a St Lucie Audubon Society field trip to Kissimmee Prairie where we assisted in the capture of Grasshopper Sparrows for banding purposes, it was estimated that there were about 50 pair of Florida Grasshopper Sparrows in the wild. That number was reduced to an estimated 15 pair of Florida Grasshopper Sparrows in 2017. In 2019, a captive breeding program was begun and since then over 500 Florida captive bred Grasshopper Sparrows have been released into the wild. The program has been successful, and it is now estimated that more than 200 Florida Grasshopper Sparrows are now living in the wild, with more to come each year as the recovery program continues.

It’s interesting that the same edition of the newspaper would carry two different bird stories: one about extinction and one about recovery. Certainly, we are aware of the successes of other recovery efforts, such as Bald Eagle, Peregrine Falcon, Osprey, and any number of other success stories. Nevertheless, we must also be mindful of the species we are losing forever. The same USFWS announcement that proposed extinction status for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker also proposed the Bachmann’s Warbler, last seen in 1988, be declared extinct.

While it is true that as individuals every single one of us is facing eventual extinction, we are confident that as a species we will continue to survive. And hopefully some day someone will find another Ivory-billed Woodpecker or Bachmann’s Warbler and further evidence that they still exist. Now if only we could find some way to prevent the extinction and figure a way to recovery of bipartisanship in Congress. That would be a true success story.