| As most birders are fully aware, the spectacular Ivory-billed Woodpecker is either extinct, or probably extinct. Though there was a flurry of reports in the past decade from eastern Arkansas, as well as less publicized reports from the panhandle of Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi, if the species still survives, it might be in Cuba, where a population had persisted until a few decades ago. The Ivory-billed -- last conclusively seen in the United States in eastern Louisiana into the early 1940's -- was a denizen of old-growth and extensive swamps and bottomlands, from eastern South Carolina, and possibly extreme southeastern North Carolina, west to eastern Texas, as well as in Cuba. Interestingly, it seemed to require large living pines in the floodplains for some or much of its foraging; it was not a bird of pure cypress-gum stands, for example. Its demise was caused mainly by extensive logging of these floodplains.
NOTE: There have been scattered reports of Ivory-billeds over the decades in the state, mainly in the Coastal Plain, but these were made by inexperienced observers, and certainly there has never been any photographic documentation for these. There is only one state record accepted by the NC BRC (see below). |