Searchers Say Rare Woodpecker Was Possibly Heard, if Not Seen: birdwatchers who spent a month in a Louisiana forest looking for the ivory-billed woodpecker didn't see it, but they think they heard it and have it on tape. The searchers were following a tip from a student who claims he saw a pair of the birds in 1999.
On Jan. 27, at 3:30 p.m., four of the six members of the search team, in an undisclosed spot in the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area near Slidell, La., heard a series of double raps characteristic of the drumming of the ivory-billed woodpecker. They managed to record the last double-rap of the sequence and some subsequent rapping.
On the same day, members of a Cornell Lab of Ornithology research group heard a similar sound in the same area, and two days later, other members of the team heard loud rapping uncharacteristic of other woodpeckers.
