#IVORY BILLED WOODPECKER PATCH#

A pileated woodpecker? A squirrel? A deer rubbing its antlers? Wiley and Michaels think it was an ivory-billed woodpecker - a big, black and white bird with a cream-colored beak. The вЂњmysteryвЂќ is what kind of critter shaved the bark away. вЂњThis card is just burning a hole in my pocket right now,вЂќ says Wiley. Wiley walks over to the trail cam, pops out the memory card and puts it in his pocket

#IVORY BILLED WOODPECKER PATCH#

Part of the branch is naked - a jagged patch of bark has been shaved away by something.Д¬redit Travis Lux / WWNO Frank Wiley, left, and Mark Michaels, right, pose for a quick photo during a trip into the woods in November 2015. The cameraвЂ™s lens is aimed at a dead branch on the ground. The RealTree of the camera matches our clothes. We reach a tree with a camouflaged trail camera strapped to it. The soils around here are sometimes firm, sometimes soggy. What I can tell you is itвЂ™s a bottomland forest somewhere in the state of Louisiana. I canвЂ™t tell you exactly where we are, because they donвЂ™t want a bunch of people swarming the area and scaring off the bird theyвЂ™re looking for. Mark Michaels and Frank Wiley lead me down a wooded trail, in a nondescript patch of thick Louisiana woods. Thanks to some new technology, the team thinks theyвЂ™re closer than ever before. Now, a ragtag team of birders is trying to prove everyone wrong: that the ivory-bill still lives in the woods of Louisiana. The last confirmed sighting was in north Louisiana in the 1940s, but rumors of its existence persisted - giving the bird a controversial reputation and a kind of mythic status. For decades, people assumed the ivory-billed woodpecker was extinct.

Ivory-billed woodpecker