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Long feared extinct, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker was rediscovered in the Big Woods of Arkansas. The bird had been feared extinct for over fifty years. Recent video footage of the Ivory-bill was published in the journal Science (April 28, 2005), a Partnership led by Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is the largest woodpecker in North America. Its name is derived from its Ivory-white bill. It is slightly larger than the Pileated Woodpecker, and has a large white wing pathes that the Pileated lacks. The Ivory-bill is associated with mature river-bottom swamp forest in the southern United States. By the 1940’s nearly all of this habitat had been lost to logging. In 1870 Fort Macon’s Surgeon Henry Crecy Yarrow reported: “Information was received from an apparently respectable source of the occurrence of this species, whose appearance was described with tolerable exactness, but the statement is given for what it may be worth, no specimen having been seen.” This report makes the vicinity of Fort Macon the northern most sighting of the magnificent bird. |