Hello all,

Keith Hackland, VNC’s Board President, is also a freelance writer as well as the owner of Alamo Inn B&B in Alamo, TX. Keith asked me if he could write a story about my experience while searching for the re-discovered Ivory-billed Woodpecker with Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Arkansas.

Below you will find that story along with a set of pictures taken while in the field. I have told myself that eventually I will write a chronological account of the two weeks that I was there. Hopefully that will happen sometime this summer when things slow down just a bit, and we will post it here.

Enjoy Keith’s story!

Martin Hagne

Searching for Giants

Along the U.S. Gulf Coast from East Texas through Florida and north as far as Arkansas there are huge areas of low-lying thick swampy woods, called bottomland hardwood swamps. This is home to many amazing creatures, including catfish, alligators, cottonmouth snakes, frogs, beaver, mink, and many species of woodpecker, and a legendary giant woodpecker. Few venture into the big woods because it is wild, snake infested, difficult to navigate, and the trees are so thick a person can easily get lost. Yesterday I had the opportunity to interview an explorer of one of these swamps, a resident of South Texas, Martin Hagne.

The adventure started when Martin was invited to apply for a place on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology team searching for the legendary giant woodpecker, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, long thought to be extinct, but reported over a year ago as having been officially rediscovered. While many credible eye witnesses have seen Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, there is little hard scientific proof. Now the search is on to get better quality evidence.

I asked Martin how he was selected for the team. “I don’t know – the invitation simply arrived via an e-mail, asking me to send in a resume for consideration. It did not take me long to think it over – being a part of this search would be an experience of a life time.” As one of the top birders in South Texas, it is not surprising that Martin was selected for a team that included volunteers from all over the U.S., many of them professional ornithologists and Ph.D.s.

Before he left in January 2006 to search the big woods near Brinkley, Arkansas, I asked Martin if I could interview him on his return. “No!”, was his answer, because of a secrecy contract. So at the end of May when I received an email from Martin that he had just been released from his secrecy contract and could talk about the experience, I was excited. We met for lunch at the Valley Nature Center where Martin is Executive Director, and over subway sandwiches we chatted. I took pages of notes as Martin scanned and read his detailed field notes and related his adventures.

“January 23. Day 6. Dusk. My lowest moment. Having spent all day sitting alone in a high blind with the temperature mostly in the forties, I was pleased to get active. I canoed across a bayou, pulled the canoe onto the far shore, and used my GPS [Global Positioning Satellite, following its reading] to locate a suspected Ivory-billed Woodpecker cavity for ‘magic hour’ [magic hour is dusk and team members were required to monitor a cavity for about an hour and a half; a point count recording all birds seen or heard was also taken]. I walked about 1350 feet through the thick swampy woods, sometimes in chest high water, to within sight of the cavity, and completed the watch while standing in knee-deep water the entire time.  As I began to back track to find my canoe, my GPS unit quit. It was starting to get dark. Eventually I reached the bayou, but saw a different blind across the channel than mine, and did not recognize the surroundings as the ones where I left the canoe. I realized that I was lost. Dressed in waders I headed along the bayou shoreline. Ahead was a little slough cutting back into the woods. I stepped carefully into the water and walked slowly forward lifting my arm full of digital equipment higher to keep it dry. The next step was weird. There was no bottom in front of me. Must be some kind of deep hole, I thought, as I tipped forward and went totally under water. Finally my boot found bottom and I was able to stand again, gasping and grabbing at the equipment. As I reached the muddy land and frantically turned off cameras, sound recorders, and GPS, I realized my water-proof waders held gallons of sloshing water. Thankfully the most sensitive equipment was in a dry bag, but still managed to get slightly wet. I was cold and shaken. It was almost dark. I was scared.”

“I still had my map and compass. I did not know exactly where I was. Everything looks identical in those woods. The trees are very dense. I found my cell phone. It worked, so I called the closest team member, 30 minutes away, and put him on alert in case I needed help. I started walking again, sloshing the water inside my waders with every step.”

“ I was fortunate. I was walking along the bayou shore in the right direction and in about fifteen minutes I found my canoe. The next forty-five minutes was the longest canoe trip I have ever taken. I was soaking wet. It was now pitch dark. It was near thirty degrees and I was really cold. I kept warm by paddling as hard and fast as I could. It took two wet cold hours to get back to our field station. Fortunately we had a washer and dryer there. My camouflage, waders, clothing and thermal underwear were all laundered. All the equipment had to be taken apart and dried with a hair dryer. My digital camera came back fried. Most of the other pieces made it. Thank goodness my Brunton binoculars are waterproof, but I was most worried about the Cornell equipment.” “I had a different respect for the swamp the next day.”

It is no simple matter searching for the giant woodpeckers. They prefer terrain that is difficult to access and a problem to traverse. Martin drove to Brinkley, Arkansas, rather than fly, so he could really get a feel for the land.

“As you drive I40 going through Arkansas and getting closer to Brinkley there is no sign of the big woods.  Then you get out on the farm roads and cross bayous under small farm bridges. Here you see the fringes of the bottomland hardwood swamps.  As you get close to the field station (an old farm house owned by The Nature Conservancy), in the area of poor, rural Cotton Plant, you actually see even less of the woods and swamps because you’re out in the cottons fields and it does not look too promising. But when you push your canoe into the bayou you quickly realize that you’re in a very very different habitat and the bayou and woods stretch for a long ways - the project area, called The Big Woods, is 550,000 acres - the area that includes the type of habitat Ivory-billed Woodpeckers could use – but the search area is much smaller – a small piece of the whole - selected because of the original sightings concentrated there, and then branched out to include the best of the habitat.”

Field work involved hiking, canoeing, and sitting in a blind, and lasted at least 12 hours, after which there were meetings and assignments for the next day. You had maybe 5 hours of sleep a night. Assignments were completed alone, in silence, in thirty degree weather. Blinds are simply a platform of plywood high up in a tree jutting out over the bayou water, surrounded by a low skirt of camouflage fabric and a chair, so a seated person can see over the skirt. Martin tells of one day he spent in a blind.

“We left the field station in the dark well before 6 a.m. and drove to the launch point. There I picked up a canoe and paddled in the dark up the bayou to my assigned blind. I relied on GPS, compass and aerial maps to find the way, using a flashlight for light. Arriving at the blind in the dark, I paddled up to the tree trunk, tied my canoe to the tree, and climbed the ladder into the blind with an armful of equipment.”

“At first light, while I sat quietly in the blind, observing and listening, it started to snow, and drop sleet, and rain icy mush – it was twenty eight degrees, very cold. I watched the snow flakes fall.”

“It was windy and isolated. Blinds are far apart so you can’t see or hear any other people. The trees are tall and they were leafless. With the wind whistling through them it was real loud, causing rustling, brushing, and knocking noises. Through the noise I could make out many different bird calls. Some I recognized, but some were foreign, and not familiar as Valley species. That afternoon I made a sound recording of the distant sound of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker, or so I thought, but later I realized that what I was hearing was only a White-breasted Nuthatch.”

“The big woods are full of woodpeckers. I watched the large Pileated Woodpecker enter a cavity - when a Piliated flies in you’re on red alert because it is similar to an Ivory-billed. You watch with rising excitement, then you realize it is just another Pileated. Seeing this large bird enter a cavity in a tree trunk is really special. It lands on the tree trunk, looks around for a while, glances into the cavity, then plops in right quick, through a 4 inch entrance. A lot of cavities are chipped into live Bald Cypress trees, as high as 90 feet up. Many trees are taller than 100 ft.”

“I saw eight different species of woodpeckers in the big woods, Pileated, Red-bellied, Hairy, and Downy Woodpeckers, Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, Northern Flickers, Red-headed and Red-cockaded woodpeckers. I shot beaver footage - beaver dams and lodges were everywhere - often I had to drag the canoe over them. I saw river otter, mink, bobcat, black bear, and white-tailed deer. I saw plenty of turtles, especially Red-earned Sliders, but due to the cold there were few snakes – I found the only snake that our team saw, a water moccasin, also called Cottonmouths. In the summer the swamp is alive with snakes.”

I asked Martin “Where were you when you first heard of the rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker?” His reply, “I was at home and received a phone call the night before the news broke - a birding friend who had connections called because he could not contain his excitement.”

“So did you see the giant during your search?” “No, I had no personal sightings nor did I hear it. But I found scaling (where the Ivory-billed Woodpecker uses its bill to strip bark off recently dead trees to look for grubs) and I saw cavities. I documented both for the search. Some team members heard the unique calls and rapping of the Ivory-billed, and a lady before me on the team had three sightings of an Ivory-billed.”

“What was your most exciting moment?” “One early morning while paddling up the bayou a Pileated Woodpecker flew over the bayou – it was a brief encounter and it was so huge and I saw so much white and I wanted it to be an Ivory-billed – but it was not. Sightings are very brief because the trees are dense - 3 ft apart or less – that allows only glimpses and momentary views of birds. I see now why it has been so hard to document a bird with pictures.”

What about Texas? The Ivory-billed Woodpecker range historically includes East Texas. Martin Hagne is now helping John Arvin, another great Texas birder, who is conducting a search in selected areas of East Texas for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. So the search for giants comes to Texas, and continues across the South.

All photos taken by and property of Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Martin Hagne.  Permission must be sought before copying.

Click on photo to enlarge

Copyright 6/2006 Keith Hackland
Bird Trails and Tales, 801 Main Street, Alamo TX  78516-2520
(956) 782-9912
Email:  alamoinn@aol.com


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