Reported Sighting of ‘Extinct’ Woodpecker Drives Bird-Watchers Batty

Some call forestry student David Kulivan delusional, others pathological.

Kulivan knew his testimony could make him look like a fool. He gave it anyway.

He insists he’s seen the ivory-billed woodpecker, one of the most majestic birds ever known--and widely believed to have been extinct for decades.

“There was a lot of scrutiny, and I’m glad because I’m skeptical about these things as well,” says Kulivan, who studies at Louisiana State University. “I don’t take a sighting, especially of an ivory bill, lightly. If I wasn’t absolutely positive of what I saw, I never would have opened my mouth.”

Kept quiet initially, Kulivan’s account has caused a considerable squawk in the bird-watching community. Birders, as they are known, compile “life lists” of birds they’ve seen far and wide, sometimes on several continents.

The ivory-billed woodpecker, with sleek white stripes running down the back of its largely black body and its distinctive ivory-white beak--and the male with its red crest and an arching red plume on its head--would go to the top of the list for many birders.

“Somebody described this as the Holy Grail of birding,” says Steve Shively, a Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries official. “I read an e-mail from one guy saying he really didn’t believe the sighting, thought the guy was deluded but agreed if the bird were there he would trade every bird on his life list for that one.”

Shively estimates that if the sighting were confirmed, tens of thousands of bird enthusiasts from around the country, even the world, would try to pour into the thick and uninviting swampland that forms the Pearl River wildlife refuge about 30 miles north of New Orleans.

“There probably would be something we’d have to do, maybe get enforcement agents out there to possibly limit people in the area at one time,” Shively says.

Top area ornithologists who have interviewed Kulivan are impressed with the detail he provided, enough to have joined several later expeditions to Pearl River.

“He had a much better grasp than a simple description and picture from a bird book,” says LSU professor Vernon Wright. “I know David from class. He is real conscientious and is not going to make up a story like that.”

“I deal with several ivory-bill sightings per year, and this one intrigued me especially because it included a lot of detail the normal ivory-bill fantasy does not contain,” adds Van Remsen, an LSU ornithology professor. “I warned him he’d be treated as if he’d seen a UFO or Bigfoot. I sicced my best attack dogs on him, and we all came out believers.”

Verification, Remsen says, would be a major event, not just for bird enthusiasts but for American naturalists in general.

“It represents the primeval forests of America--sort of our lost heritage of virgin forests in the Southeastern United States,” Remsen says.

Kulivan does not consider himself a birder. The day he claims to have seen the ivory bill--April 1, 1999 (he insists this is not an April Fool’s joke)--he was turkey hunting. Dressed in camouflage, he sat quietly waiting for a gobbler when a pair of woodpeckers landed on a water oak about 25 yards away.

Many believe Kulivan saw pileated woodpeckers, which are about the same size and fairly prevalent in the area. They look similar enough that numerous false ivory-bill reports come in every year from people who, after being interviewed by experts, are found to have all but certainly seen pileateds.

Kulivan, who sat motionless and silent as the birds went about their business, points to key features that, to him, distinguished the birds as ivory-billed woodpeckers.

The female had a black crest, as ivory bills do, while pileated females have red crests, Kulivan notes. The fact that the male and female were together was another hint, as ivory-bill mating pairs stay together, while pileateds generally do not.

“Then there was the ivory-white bill, and the call is completely different,” he says.

Kulivan says the birds he saw, rather than driving their beaks into the bark with the quick and steady repetition of a drum-roll, as a pileated does, struck with two quick knocks as a time, as the ivory bill was known to do.

“It’s nothing like I’ve ever seen before, and it leaves a very distinct impression,” Kulivan says.

Although more than a year has passed since the sighting, those who believe Kulivan’s story say much more exploration of the several-thousand-acre refuge remains before they can rule out his report. And expeditions are most effective in midwinter or early spring.

The summer brings insufferable conditions: high heat, humidity and a thickness of vegetation that makes it hard to see the hazards lurking in the swamp.

“You’re distracted by mosquito bites, spider webs and watching ground for venomous snakes, and your optical equipment is fogging up,” says David Muth, a National Park Service official in New Orleans. “It’s not a pleasant experience most of the time.”

Though Muth is among those who want to believe the bird still exists, he has trouble being optimistic, in large part because he’s seen little evidence that the habitat the bird requires can still be found in America.

The birds feed on beetles that infest recently dead old-growth trees just beneath the bark. Tree cutting in the area during the last century affected most of what is now the refuge, leaving little if any of the environment required for the bird’s survival, Muth says.

“I don’t think Kulivan is making it up or that there’s anything nefarious going on . . . and I agree with a lot of people it’s the most credible report in a long time,” Muth says. “But while the Pearl River is a magnificent forest and one of the few big chunks of bottom land forest left in the Southeast, the truth is the history of the forest is not particularly encouraging.

“There have been times of massive clearing, and the age of the forest doesn’t appear to me old enough to have sustained ivory bills over the last 100 years.”

Tulane physicist and bird enthusiast Dan Purrington joined several trips to Pearl River since Kulivan’s report but never had much hope.

“A friend of mine has a theory that while he was sitting next to a tree he dozed off and dreamed the whole thing,” Purrington says. “There’s nothing I can think of that would be more exciting than finding an ivory-billed in southeast Louisiana, but since I think it’s very improbable, the most generous thing to do is assume he made an honest mistake.”

Kulivan says he’s never second-guessed himself and doesn’t need to see the birds again to be sure of what he saw.

“I don’t feel the need to be personally validated, “ he says. “But I would like for someone, me or someone else, to see it again.”