In September 2021, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced its intention to officially declare 23 species extinct. This would be the highest number of species that have ever been delisted from the Endangered Species Act at one time. Hearing this news, I can’t help but wonder what good it will do. These creatures will lose their federal protections, casualties of deforestation. Of these 23 ghosts, the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker looms largest in the hearts of naturalists and haunts my home state’s swamplands.

Arkansas is home to the Buffalo River, the Ouachita and Ozark Mountains, bubbling thermal springs, old-growth forests, diamond mines and millions of acres of rice farms. After a good rain, crystals sprout from the soil like glittering seedlings. I grew up feeling like my fellow Arkansans were unfairly pigeonholed as ignorant yokels. Truthfully, most of us are natural-born conservationists. Even the hunters have a deep respect for the land and what it provides. In 2005, we were finally known for something hopeful: our lush forests were the last refuge of the Lord God bird.

Local legend has it that the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker earned its nickname, the Lord God bird, because of the exclamation those lucky enough to see one can’t help but utter: “Lord God, what a bird.” It is a mammoth, prehistoric looking feathered creature with a three-foot wingspan. The inky black plumage is cut through with a bolt of white, starting behind the bird’s bright yellow eye and zig-zagging down its back like a racing stripe. The lower half of the wings appear to be dipped in white. Other than its larger size, the white on its wings is what differentiates the Ivory-Bill from its common cousin, the Pileated Woodpecker. That, and the bone-colored beak for which it is named. The males have a startlingly red crest, while the female’s crest remains black but ends in a slight curl.

I speak about the bird in the present tense, because like many others, I hold out hope that it is still alive out there. We often don’t recognize precious things until they are gone forever. If an enormous bird can glide unnoticed through the bayous for sixty years, what other secrets might our untouched landscapes be hiding? Perhaps we haven’t completely destroyed things.

The Ivory-Bill makes its home in the primeval forests and baldcypress swamps of the American Southeast. By the middle of the 20th century, most of these forests had been cleared. The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology holds the only clear video footage remaining of the Ivory-Bill, taken in 1935. The film features a mated pair keeping watch over their nest hole. Their large, reptilian claws cling to the side of the bark as they dart their heads back and forth, tilting like metronomes, scanning the area for predators. 

I watch the footage over and over. They look majestic and fragile, like a portrait made from stained glass. It reminds me of that eerie video of the last Tasmanian Tigers in captivity that turned my stomach as a child. Knowing that they’re extinct, it’s hard not to anthropomorphize the Thylacines as they pace up and down their cage, their expressive eyes seeming to plead for help. The Ivory-Bill is closer to home. The more I watch this last pair protecting their clutch of precious eggs, the more desperate I become. Why couldn’t we save them?

In 2004, a kayaker from Hot Springs paddled along the Cache River through the Big Woods area of Eastern Arkansas. Something that looked like a pterodactyl darted through the cypress and tupelo trees ahead of him to perch. He was soon in touch with Tim Gallagher of Cornell University and Bobby Harrison of Alabama's Oakwood College, two respected and experienced ornithologists. Within days, the men were drifting through the flooded forest of the Big Woods. Suddenly, a large bird flew towards their canoe. Both scientists pointed and yelled “Ivory-Bill!” before the bird changed course and disappeared into the trees. Maybe the bird would have perched nearby and they could have taken a clear photograph if they hadn’t shouted, but in an interview with NPR, Gallagher recalls, laughing, “You don't want to be the only one who sees a bird like that and not have a witness.” He was right. Having two ornithologists corroborate the sighting is what made the world stand up and pay attention.

After a year of research in the area, in conjunction with the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, they published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Science, officially announcing to the world that the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker was not in fact extinct and had been rediscovered in Arkansas. This was huge national news, but had even bigger implications in the state of Arkansas. I live in Little Rock, the capital city, but even my “cosmopolitan” town is considered country-fried by the rest of the nation.

Species formerly thought to be extinct are found fairly often, like snails and frogs and insects, but the rediscovery of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker captivated our national consciousness. Perhaps it’s because birdwatching is a hobby enjoyed by nearly 60 million Americans, and finding this bird was something akin to a confirmed Elvis sighting.

But why do birds in particular capture our imaginations? I’m sure it has something to do with the feeling that we’re looking at a living dinosaur. A woodpecker has four-pronged talons with two toes in the front and two in the back to allow them to grip the bark of a tree. Songbirds have three toes in front and one in back for perching, but it’s these zygodactyl feet shared by woodpeckers, parrots, and large birds of prey like owls that look so alien.

Whenever my parrot perches on my finger, I’m fascinated by his scaled toes with curved claws. I can’t help thinking about that scene in Jurassic Park where Dr. Alan Grant terrifies a child by holding a velociraptor claw and describing this six-foot turkey slashing open his belly and spilling his intestines.

***

I became a bird owner out of a deep loneliness and desire to reconnect with the natural world. I moved to New York City in 2011 to work in publishing and to get away from the South. I felt that in order to be taken seriously, I needed to surround myself with culture and tall buildings. On one hand, I accomplished my goal: I worked at an agency in midtown Manhattan. What I didn’t expect was to be surrounded by millions of people and rarely speak to anyone. New Yorkers always seem to be in transit, focused on their next destination rather than the people around them.

For several years I lived in Flatbush, Brooklyn, an hour’s train ride from anywhere, with dirty streets and liquor stores walled off with bulletproof plexiglass. My apartment ceiling leaked and black mold grew in every crevice. I could barely afford my half of the rent for less than 700 square feet, and my roommate was a hoarder. Trees were a rarity. I remember coming home from work one summer night and my eyes filling with tears at the sight of a firefly.

I found Birdcamp one afternoon as I walked down 53rd street. They had to buzz me in to the small storefront to make sure all the birds were contained before they opened the door. The railroad-style bird specialty store and boarding facility was a cacophony of squawking parrots. The owner, Brian, was a bird-loving savant with a penchant for painting tin civil war soldiers, and he would refuse to sell if he didn’t like the look of you.

I saw a small cage filled with small, pink chicks that Brian was in the process of hand-feeding. Every day after work for weeks I came by to visit the Rosy Bourke fledglings until they were fully weaned and Brian trusted me enough to sell them to me.

Jesse and Flynn came to live with me in my squalid apartment. There is a lot of guilt that comes with being a bird owner. They are wild things that need to fly. Dogs and cats are domesticated animals, birds are not. I think this is another reason why birds captivate people. They’re prey animals, always darting from perch to perch, bobbing their heads with serpentine movements.

I never clipped Flynn and Jesse’s wings. Every morning, as soon as the sun rose, I let them out to flit around the room while I got ready for work. When I came home, I ran to free them again. I left music playing for them throughout the day because I knew that in their natural habitat they would be surrounded by noise (though it would be the buzzing of the Australian Outback rather than an iTunes playlist).

In the wild, Bourke’s parrots are an endangered species. Jesse and Flynn are a soft, cherry blossom pink with yellow tipped wings and flecks of blue above their nares. They would never survive in the wild; their bright color mutations would ruin any chance of camouflage. Wild Bourkes are small and brownish grey with a rosy belly. They blend in perfectly with the reddish Australian soil and acacia bushes where they forage. I tell myself I’ve saved them from the harsh wilderness and given them a better life than they could have had otherwise, but the truth is that they gave me a sense of purpose and a connection to the wild that my life in New York was lacking.

***

When the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker was officially declared alive in the Arkansas swamps, the small farming town of Brinkley, located just a few miles from the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, saw it as an answer to their prayers. The nickname Lord God bird took on another meaning.

A resident told NPR at the time, “You know, you got to realize we're here in the Delta. We're right next door to the poorest county in the whole United States. And we have been wanting something, praying for an industry.” Ironically, duck hunting is the city’s main source of income in the months of November, December and January when the rice fields are flooded. Hunters worried about wildlife officials shutting down large swaths of popular hunting areas to protect the Ivory-Bill’s habitat. But another resident pointed out that “this bird thing is going to be good the year 'round, and my business has already improved, like, 20 percent. Everybody's enthused.” They welcomed the bird with open arms and took advantage of the opportunity to capitalize on the bird-watching tourists coming from all over the world to try and catch a glimpse.

The town erected an enormous billboard next to their I-40 exit, proclaiming “Brinkley, Home of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.” Local restaurant Gene’s BBQ painted a mural on the side of the building: “Home of the ivory-billed burger. The bird is the word.” They sold t-shirts, woodpecker memorabilia, and of course the famous burger: two hamburger patties, mozzarella cheese, pepper, bacon and a sesame seed bun. A large portrait of the bird in flight graced the wall. A local barbershop offered a woodpecker haircut for $25, where your hair is styled to a point and dyed fire-engine red, mimicking the bird’s crest, with close cropped sides dyed black and striped with white.

A gift shop called “The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Nest” opened in town. The owner, Lisa Boyd, rented out other properties in Brinkley, but decided to turn the building space on Main street into a souvenir shop that would hopefully turn more profit than rent, exclusively selling T-shirts, sweatshirts, buttons, artwork, books, key chains and other items that featured the bird. Visitors to Brinkley were greeted by a huge neon sign with a full color portrait of the bird, advertising the Ivory-Billed Inn. Rita Clements, local artist and owner of Rita’s Art, began selling large wooden cutouts of the bird. She had been planning to move out of the state due to the struggling economy, but the woodpecker provided a new opportunity. Popular recording artist Sufjan Stevens wrote a song called “The Lord God Bird” based on interviews with people in Brinkley and their excitement about the bird’s return. It was a hopeful time.

The problem was that the evidence of the Ivory-Bill was limited to one grainy video recording of a bird flapping its wings in the distance. It became infamous, jokingly referred to as the Zapruder film of the bird world. In their report for Science, Gallagher and Harrison analyzed the video frame by frame, pointing to the white undersides of the wings, a distinct feature of the Ivory-Bill that separates it from the Pileated. They also measured the tree the bird took off from and concluded that the wingspan of the bird in the video was too large to be anything else.

But of course, the longer the scientists went without providing a clear photograph, the more the skeptics came out of the woodwork. With recording equipment set up all over the wildlife refuge and running for months on end, how could they not get one single clear picture of the Ivory-Bill? People began comparing the sighting to Bigfoot, and it seemed as though Arkansans were once again the butt of the joke.

Many people claimed to have seen the bird, but it was always so fast that they weren’t able to get a camera out in time. Interviews with the people of Brinkley and surrounding areas started to sound like folks talking about alien abductions. National media seemed to be winking and nudging each other with their elbows: “Yeah, ok, sure Billy-Bob, you saw the woodpecker.”

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology spent around one million dollars and another year searching the Cache River area before announcing in 2006 that they had failed to capture any definitive evidence and they would be ceasing their efforts there and moving to other areas of the state. Scientists around the world erupted in snark and anger about wasted federal funds. The debate raged on. One woodpecker specialist described the efforts as "faith-based ornithology." Cornell had captured some compelling audio evidence of what sounded like the Ivory-Bill’s signature kent call, a beeping sound like that of a plaintive bike horn. But without photographic or video proof, no one wanted to confirm the bird calls. Dr. Jerome Jackson, a professor at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, told the Arkansas Times, “I think that maybe it’s a reality check for the people of Brinkley… I keep telling them, don’t hitch your star to one icon, but to the ecosystem and all of its values.”

***

I drive to Brinkley on a muggy Saturday in 2021, sixteen years after the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker made national headlines. It’s an hour away from Little Rock, halfway between my home and Memphis on a long, flat stretch of I-40. There’s not much to see along the way other than bare farmland—it’s too early in the year for many of our crops. I’m hoping to find some evidence of what the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker once meant to the town of Brinkley. Perhaps artwork of the bird, maybe some ardent believers who can tell me about their own sightings. I desperately want some reassurance that the bird still matters. I’m captivated by its haunting kent call and the black and white footage of the birds at their nest hole.

As I pass the White and Cache Rivers, I keep turning my head toward the forest. Some completely irrational part of me thinks the bird might just flap past my peripheral, and if I blink I might miss it. I reach exit 216 and notice that the “Home of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker” billboard is gone. So is the Ivory-Billed Inn and its neon portrait. I decide to stop by the Chamber of Commerce first to see if they have any information for me. I follow my GPS down some gravel roads, past small houses bowing under the weight of the years, until I reach “historic downtown,” a single city block with scattered Western-style false front buildings. Some are occupied while others are not only empty, but hollowed out. I park in a small lot next to an abandoned building that might have once been a gas station; now it’s filled with an assortment of trash and destroyed furniture.

The streets are empty, save for mosquitos swarming above puddles of standing water—one resident later tells me that in Brinkley, the skeeters mate with hummingbirds. I make my way to the front of the Chamber of Commerce, only to find a sheet of paper taped to the window:

NEW OFFICE HOURS

TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY
10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
IF NEEDED ANY OTHER TIME, CALL AARON

There is no phone number. I wonder if everyone just knows who Aaron is. A woman spots me standing in front of the double doors. I tell her I’m looking for information about the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker and she cocks her head, squinting, as if trying to recall a long-forgotten memory, and tells me I might try the Central Delta Depot & Museum.

The building, located in a restored 1912 Union Railroad Depot, features exhibits chronicling local history. When I arrive, I find that it’s closed indefinitely. No one in Brinkley can afford to volunteer as a curator, so the museum sits abandoned for the time being.

I realize I probably won’t find anything official documenting the Ivory-Bill’s presence, now that so much time has passed, but surely I could scrounge up some artwork or old memorabilia. I know that the Ivory-Bill Nest gift shop closed years ago, but I think those T-shirts and key-chains must still exist. There are several antique shops on the historic downtown strip, so I walk back that way.

I enter the first antique store expecting to find paintings of the Ivory-Bill or some of the wooden cutouts that Rita Clements used to make. It feels like I’ve embarked on my own expedition to hunt down the grail bird. It turns out that searching for the bird’s image proves just as difficult as trying to find the bird itself. I pass dusty shelves of children’s books, old VHS tapes, and a neon New Kids On The Block fanny pack. The booths near the front of the store hold more upscale furnishings, and something tugs at my heart every time I see an image of a bird. I enter one booth with a series of artwork featuring birds hanging on the wall. My eyes dart from robin to hummingbird to cardinal, scrutinizing each portrait, looking for that black bird with white stripes. There are ducks everywhere. Each time I turn a corner into a new booth, there’s a wave of fresh excitement, like I’m getting closer.

A woman walks in, the first customer in the hour I’ve been here, and I introduce myself and tell her why I’m here. She gazes at me, momentarily stunned, then says, “You know, it’s funny you bring that up. I have an old poster of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker at home, and I was thinking about getting it framed recently. For the memory.”

I ask her what it was like living here during that time. She tells me that her three sons were in the public-school system, and they had units of study on the bird. One day they were out in the yard and she swears they saw it. The boys had received cameras for Christmas from their uncle and they ran into the house to grab them, but by the time they came back outside it had started to fly away and they chased after it. “It was so fast. I understand why nobody could get a picture of it. We really wanted to, though.” After a couple of years, everyone gave up hope. She fondly remembers how the town’s economy had seemed to turn around. Then the bird left, and so did Walmart, and so did many of the residents.

I walk down the street to the next antique store and find the owner outside smoking a cigarette. I tell him I’m looking for anything to do with the Ivory-Bill and he chuckles. He says he hasn’t heard that in a long time. He doesn’t think they have anything, but I’m welcome to poke around. So, I do. I scour every booth, with the same hopeful anticipation, and again I am let down. There are no woodpeckers here. I leave with an old bluegrass record and a small framed cross-stitch of a blue jay.

***

After keeping my parrots in my Brooklyn apartment for a few months, they began to get sick. I watched Jesse’s tail bob up and down as he struggled to breath, his beak yawning open, tiny lungs rattling. Flynn’s left eye became red and swollen. He scratched at it constantly. Something in the air was irritating their sensitive respiratory systems.
I should have known that it had something to do with my leaking pre-war apartment building. Even getting “fresh” air from an open window wouldn’t help much. I’ll never forget the time I walked home through the city and came in to blow my nose, only to see that my snot had turned a sooty black from the air pollution.

Finding an avian vet was another challenge, even in a big city like New York. Once I did, I had to figure out how to transport the birds without the freezing cold weather making them even sicker. It was February with a windchill of -15 degrees Fahrenheit. I put Jesse in a small, plastic carrier, wrapped with layers of scarves. I stuffed a sock full of uncooked rice, warmed it up in the microwave, then placed my makeshift heating pad against the carrier. I packed the whole bundle into my jacket and shuffled to the subway station.

The vet diagnosed him with Psittacosis and started a regimen of expensive shots. She was wrong, by the way. The shots didn’t help, and I spent every bit of money I had trying to keep him from suffering. I tried to sell old jewelry because I could no longer afford taco meat, but even the pawn shop thought that my things were worthless.

The birds were the only thing keeping me company outside of work hours. I couldn’t lose them. My job had become my entire identity. Days were repetitive cycles of waking at sunrise, subway commutes, and editing contracts line by line.

One afternoon, my dad called to tell me he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. His hand had been tremoring for a couple of years, but he insisted it was just anxiety and refused to see a doctor. He assured me that he would start taking medication and the disease would slow down for a few years. I sat on the edge of the Bethesda Fountain and cried.

The people I loved were over a thousand miles away. My father and brother were both suffering from destructive neurological conditions. I was in New York to pursue a publishing career, but I was beginning to realize that the career success I craved would have to come at the expense of everything else. My roots were in Arkansas, and I was withering like a plant trying to draw water from soil that I wasn’t suited for.

Federal Aviation Regulations only allow you to travel with one bird on a plane. I bought Flynn and Jesse a mesh backpack fitted with perches, rented a car that I loaded with my few belongings, and drove back home to Arkansas.

The birds haven’t been sick since we’ve been here.

***

I head to the last destination on my agenda in Brinkley: Gene’s BBQ. My GPS routes me to a building off the main drag, now called DePriest’s BBQ. There’s a mural painted on the side of the building that I presume once said “Home of the ivory-billed burger”, but now it just says “The Roost.” Ducks of all kinds float on the painted pond and fly across the brickwork. As I snap a photo, a car pulls up next to me. A woman steps out, a waitress getting ready to go in through the back door to start her shift, and asks me what I’m up to. When I tell her I’m here for the burger, she says “honey, you’re in luck” and tells me to go around front and she’ll meet me inside.

It’s an unassuming restaurant with wood paneled walls, the kind with full rolls of paper towels set on each table. I sit alone at one of the small tables and the waitress I met outside comes over to hand me a paper menu. I find the closest thing I’ve seen all day to evidence that the bird had been here: The Ivory Bill Burger, two 5oz. beef patties, bacon and pepper jack cheese on a bun. She jots down my order and points over to a group of about ten people seated at a long table, picnic style. “You’re here at the right time, the locals are here and they’ll tell you everything you want to know.” The group enthusiastically encourages me to grab my purse and head over to join them for lunch. Turns out they call that the “community table.”

I meet Henry, Mike and Linda, then Janice and John, a couple in their 60s who run the local funeral home. John tells me Janice is the resident “bird-brain” and she laces her fingers together, leans towards me, and launches into what she knows about the Ivory-Bill. “This place has been sold, but Gene had a photograph of one of ‘em supposedly, in flight, on the wall here at one time. Now, the game warden’s son said he used to see the bird all the time, he just knew it was a honkin’ big bird.”

John interjects, “He just thought it was the biggest woodpecker he’d ever seen, you know? He didn’t think too much of it.”

The door chimes and Janice turns to the newcomer. “Hey there! How are you doing Chuck? Good to see you. Come on around and join the group if you want.” They hug and it’s immediately apparent that no one is a stranger here. I think about my time living in New York, and how I would sometimes go to the church down the street on a Sunday morning, not because I was particularly religious, but because I knew that the group all stood in a circle and hugged at the end of service and I wanted to be a part of it.

Mike turns to me. “I wasn’t living here during that time period, all I know is every time I would come over and visit, Gene’s would be full of people from the National Audubon Society.”

Janice rejoins the conversation to tell me, “They did discover a lot of things, and said this area was very, very rich, they had no idea.” Everyone agrees that the best thing to come out of the Ivory-Bill craze was national recognition for Arkansas’s abundant landscape. I tell Janice about my life in Brooklyn and the moment I was so moved by the sight of a firefly.

I ask Janice how many people live in Brinkley. “Down to 3,000, I think. When I was growing up, we were around 6,000. Beautiful, beautiful town. A beautiful town until Walmart came in. Walmart came in and killed all our little businesses.”

The group groans in agreement and Linda says, bitterly, “And then they left.”

Janice nods and continues, “My dad had a service station, entire company out on West 70, and he could go to Walmart and buy oil cheaper than he could buy it from his wholesaler. Which I never felt like was right.”

Suddenly my Ivory-Bill burger arrives. They all chuckle when I exclaim “it’s huge!” and watch me take my first bite.

John smiles, “Do you think it does the bird justice?” I don’t know if it does, but it’s definitely a damn good burger.

Now that the conversation has turned back to the Ivory-Bill, Henry, who has been quiet through lunch, tells me about his own experience. “I can remember seein’ him out in the woods. Scared me to death, slipped up on ‘im, he jumped out on me, it looked like a big albatross you know, huge. That’s in the 60s. I just thought it was a big bird, I didn’t know what it actually was.”

Our waitress comes back around to see who needs refills; she knows everyone by name. She hands me a piece of paper. “Found this for you.”

It’s the cover from the old Gene’s BBQ menu. A full-color portrait of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker soars across the page past a forest of baldcypress trees. It’s angled slightly so that you can see the white-tipped plumage across its wings. I realize everyone is looking over my shoulder.

Mike tells me, “He used to have that big piece of art, when Gene had the place, hanging on that wall.” The waitress tells me I can keep it. I tell everyone at the community table that I’ve got to head back to Little Rock, and they say they hope to see me again sometime. They’re here every day. John smiles, “Same time, same station!”

I head home with my treasure. An insert from an old restaurant’s menu. Though it’s only a painting, and I’m holding a blurry photograph of that painting color-printed onto a thin sheet of paper, I’m drawn to the bird’s bright yellow eye. Finally, I’ve found the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker in Brinkley. At the bottom underneath the business hours and the portrait of the bird, in capital letters: WE BELIEVE.

***

In April 2010, Cornell officially ended their search for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker in Arkansas. By 2014, the U.S. Committee of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative listed the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker as “Probably Extinct.” Many experts agree that we’re in the midst of a sixth mass extinction. In the last fifty years, North America has lost more than three billion birds. “Gone the way of the dodo” is part of our everyday lexicon, thrown around casually as if it’s a joke.

Small towns in America face their own kind of extinction. Like me, many college graduates leave their hometowns and flee to the coasts. Brinkley’s mayor told NPR in 2005, “We're coming up on graduation, and that is, to me, a very sad occasion, because we're exporting these young people out, because there's not anything really primarily to hold them. You know, some will go off to college, but they won't return.” In the end, the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker didn’t bring jobs to Brinkley.

My own backyard teems with cardinals, chickadees, thrashers and waxwings. Many afternoons I sit stock-still near the birdfeeder, a visitor in their space, admiring their plumage as they spring from branch to branch. I’m no longer a transplant. I came home to a place where my roots can grow and spread.

Arkansas has ten national wildlife refuges, including 67,000 acres in the Cache River area where we found the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. Whether we officially proved its continued existence or not, many acres of bottomland property gained habitat protection as a result of the search. Bird-watchers from all over the world took notice of our rich and abundant landscape, and many endangered species still make their home here.

What good will it do to declare the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker extinct? We may not have definitive evidence, but surely we have enough reasonable doubt to protect their native habitats from further destruction. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently reopened the public comment period on their proposal to delist the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. It’s official status still hangs in the balance.

The residents of Brinkley believe it was there. I want to believe it still is.