There has been birdwatching hysteria in Arkansas over a 2005 alleged spotting of an ivory billed woodpecker in the swamps of Eastern Arkansas. “Among the world’s largest woodpeckers, the ivory-bill is one of six North American bird species suspected or known to have gone extinct since 1880. The last conclusive sighting of the woodpecker was in Louisiana in 1944,” reports the National Geographic in April 2005. The magazine published this picture of the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker.

Well lo and behold, on Tuesday 11th of May, Fr. John came running to my cell summoning me to the back kitchen door where we saw, not one but two huge woodpeckers that looked just like the picture in the National Geographic. He wanted me to take a picture of it, but I didn’t have the right equipment. As all he had was his cell phone, I went back to my room to get my Coolpix 3100, set it’s little zoom as far as I could and snapped three pictures from inside the screen door. I was afraid to go out and frighten them off. Later Fr. Marion Joseph got his high powered Nikon, but by this time they had flown up high into a tree. The second photo was the best shot Marion’s camera could get.

I finally decided to retrieve my own three shots. The second bird was disappearing to the back of the tree’s trunk in my first shot. The first two shots were out of focus, but lo and behold on the third shot I managed to get a decent shot of the woodpecker. Is this the elusive Ivory billed woodpecker? If it is we had two of them at Marylake at 5:00 pm on May 11th.