Ivory-Billed Tale

We just got from the presentation at this month’s meeting of the Yolo Audubon Society. John Trochet, a Sacramento area birder and a meticulous field surveyor, gave a riveting account of how he came to see the recently rediscovered Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. He has been a long-time explorer of the swamps of the Southeast and an occasional ivory-billed searcher. Last April, he went on his own little expedition into the Arkansas swamps with another ivory-billed seeker. After running into the official Cornell Lab and Nature Conservancy search teams and dancing around the question of what they were both doing in the woods, they were invited to the private home of one of the researchers, made to sign non-disclosure agreements (this was before the public announcement of the resighting), and were told the whole tale. Two days later, John and his two companions, now coordinating with the Cornell/TNC folks, had the great good fortune to get a three-second glimpse of an ivory-billed, not far from where they put in with the canoe that day.