A Close Encounter With the Rarest Bird

Newfound negatives provide fresh views of the young ivory-billed woodpecker

  • By Stephen Lyn Bales
  • Photographs by James T. Tanner
  • Smithsonian magazine, September 2010, Subscribe
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Ivory billed woodpecker
James T. Tanner's photographs of the ivory-billed woodpecker with guide J.J. Kuhn were believed to be the only pictures of a living nestling. (James T. Tanner)

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The ivory-billed woodpecker is one of the most extraordinary birds ever to live in America’s forests: the biggest woodpecker in the United States, it seems to keep coming back from the dead. Once resident in swampy bottomlands from North Carolina to East Texas, it was believed to have gone extinct as early as the 1920s, but sightings, confirmed and otherwise, have been reported as recently as this year.

The young ornithologist James T. Tanner’s sightings in the late 1930s came with substantial documentation: not only field notes, from which he literally wrote the book on the species, but also photographs. In fact, Tanner’s photographs remain the most recent uncontested pictures of the American ivory-bill. Now his widow, Nancy Tanner, has discovered more photographs that he took on a fateful day in 1938.

Tanner was a doctoral candidate at Cornell University when, in 1937, he was sent to look for ivory-bills in Southern swamplands, including a vast virgin forest in northeast Louisiana called the Singer Tract. Two years earlier, his mentor, Arthur Allen, founder of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, had proved that the “Lord God” bird—so named for what people supposedly exclaimed after getting a look at its 20-inch body and 30-inch wingspan—was still extant, with observations of several adult ivory-bills in the same forest.

“There are relatively few references to young Ivorybills,” Allen wrote in 1937, “and there is no complete description of an immature bird.” But that would soon change.

On his initial solo trip to the Singer Tract, Tanner became the first person to provide such a description, after watching two adults feed a nestling in a hole they’d carved high in a sweet gum tree. “It took me some time to realize that the bird in the hole was a young one; it seemed impossible,” he scribbled in his field notes. When he returned to those woods in early 1938, he discovered another nest hole, 55 feet off the ground in the trunk of a red maple. And in it he discovered another young ivory-bill.

Watching the nest for 16 days, Tanner noted that the bird’s parents usually foraged for about 20 minutes at midday. No ivory-bill had ever been fitted with an identifying band, so Tanner resolved to affix one to the nestling’s leg while its parents were away.

On his 24th birthday, March 6, 1938, Tanner decided to act. Up he went, on went the band—and out came the ivory-bill, bolting from the nest in a panic after Tanner trimmed a branch impeding his view of the nest hole. Too young to fly, the bird fluttered to a crash landing “in a tangle of vines,” Tanner wrote in his field notes, “where he clung, calling and squalling.” The ornithologist scrambled down the tree, retrieved the bird and handed it to his guide, J. J. Kuhn. “I surely thought that I had messed things up,” Tanner wrote. But as the minutes ticked away, he “unlimbered” his camera and began shooting, “jittery and nervous as all get-out,” unsure of whether he was getting any useful pictures. After exhausting his film, he returned the bird to its nest, “probably as glad as he that he was back there.”

When Tanner’s Cornell dissertation was published as The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker in 1942, the book included two pictures of the juvenile bird perched on Kuhn’s arm and head. Those frames, along with four others less widely printed—the only known photographs of a living nestling ivory-bill—have provided generations of birders with an image laden with fragile, possibly doomed, hope.


The ivory-billed woodpecker is one of the most extraordinary birds ever to live in America’s forests: the biggest woodpecker in the United States, it seems to keep coming back from the dead. Once resident in swampy bottomlands from North Carolina to East Texas, it was believed to have gone extinct as early as the 1920s, but sightings, confirmed and otherwise, have been reported as recently as this year.

The young ornithologist James T. Tanner’s sightings in the late 1930s came with substantial documentation: not only field notes, from which he literally wrote the book on the species, but also photographs. In fact, Tanner’s photographs remain the most recent uncontested pictures of the American ivory-bill. Now his widow, Nancy Tanner, has discovered more photographs that he took on a fateful day in 1938.

Tanner was a doctoral candidate at Cornell University when, in 1937, he was sent to look for ivory-bills in Southern swamplands, including a vast virgin forest in northeast Louisiana called the Singer Tract. Two years earlier, his mentor, Arthur Allen, founder of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, had proved that the “Lord God” bird—so named for what people supposedly exclaimed after getting a look at its 20-inch body and 30-inch wingspan—was still extant, with observations of several adult ivory-bills in the same forest.

“There are relatively few references to young Ivorybills,” Allen wrote in 1937, “and there is no complete description of an immature bird.” But that would soon change.

On his initial solo trip to the Singer Tract, Tanner became the first person to provide such a description, after watching two adults feed a nestling in a hole they’d carved high in a sweet gum tree. “It took me some time to realize that the bird in the hole was a young one; it seemed impossible,” he scribbled in his field notes. When he returned to those woods in early 1938, he discovered another nest hole, 55 feet off the ground in the trunk of a red maple. And in it he discovered another young ivory-bill.

Watching the nest for 16 days, Tanner noted that the bird’s parents usually foraged for about 20 minutes at midday. No ivory-bill had ever been fitted with an identifying band, so Tanner resolved to affix one to the nestling’s leg while its parents were away.

On his 24th birthday, March 6, 1938, Tanner decided to act. Up he went, on went the band—and out came the ivory-bill, bolting from the nest in a panic after Tanner trimmed a branch impeding his view of the nest hole. Too young to fly, the bird fluttered to a crash landing “in a tangle of vines,” Tanner wrote in his field notes, “where he clung, calling and squalling.” The ornithologist scrambled down the tree, retrieved the bird and handed it to his guide, J. J. Kuhn. “I surely thought that I had messed things up,” Tanner wrote. But as the minutes ticked away, he “unlimbered” his camera and began shooting, “jittery and nervous as all get-out,” unsure of whether he was getting any useful pictures. After exhausting his film, he returned the bird to its nest, “probably as glad as he that he was back there.”

When Tanner’s Cornell dissertation was published as The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker in 1942, the book included two pictures of the juvenile bird perched on Kuhn’s arm and head. Those frames, along with four others less widely printed—the only known photographs of a living nestling ivory-bill—have provided generations of birders with an image laden with fragile, possibly doomed, hope.

In a 1942 article for the ornithological journal The Wilson Bulletin, Tanner wrote “there is little doubt but that complete logging of the [Singer] tract will cause the end of the Ivorybills there.” The tract was indeed completely logged, and an ivory-bill sighting there in 1944 remains the last uncontested observation anywhere in the United States. Before he died at age 76 in 1991, Tanner, who taught for 32 years at the University of Tennessee, had sadly concluded that the species was extinct.

Three years ago, I began working with Nancy Tanner on a book about her husband’s fieldwork. In June 2009, she discovered a faded manila envelope in the back of a drawer at her home in Knoxville, Tennessee. In it were some ivory-bill images. At her invitation, I started going through them.

One of the first things I found was a glassine envelope containing a 2 1/4- by 3 1/4-inch negative. Holding it up to the light, I realized it was of the nestling ivory-bill from the Singer Tract—an image I had never seen. I quickly found another negative, then another and another. My hands began to shake. It turned out that Tanner had taken not 6 pictures on that long-ago March 6, but 14. As a group, they show the young bird not frozen in time, but rather clambering over Kuhn like a cat on a scratching post, frightened but vital.

Like almost any ornithologist, Jim Tanner would have liked to have been proved wrong about the ivory-bill’s fate. In 2005, the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology announced that searchers had seen an ivory-bill multiple times in ten months in the Big Woods in Arkansas. Other researchers, connected to Auburn University, reported 13 sightings in 2005 and 2006 along the Choctawhatchee River in Florida’s panhandle. In both cases, the sightings were made by experienced observers, including trained ornithologists. Yet neither group’s documentation—including a 4.5-second video of a bird in Arkansas—has been universally accepted. So the wait for incontrovertible evidence continues. Photographs like the ones Jim Tanner took in 1938 would do nicely.

Stephen Lyn Bales is a naturalist in Knoxville. His book about James Tanner, Ghost Birds, is due out this month.


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Comments (49)

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I love this article. It was great!

Posted by Kudos on February 22,2012 | 02:09 PM

wow! only about a third of the people who commented actually read it. For those of you who didn't. READ THE ARTICLE! If you are so anxious to post a comment, please check your facts before wasting other peoples time by having to filter thru those rediculous comments. The bird is real, the man it is purched on was Tanner's assistant and he has been dead for years.BE MORE PRODUCTIVE WITH ALL THE TIME YOU ARE SPENDING ON THE INTERNET!

Posted by greta on May 16,2011 | 01:25 PM

My family had hunting land in the old Singer Reserve and we spent many, many days in this swamp. It is wild and beautiful beyond description; stiffling hot and bone chilling cold. I dare say that if a man or bird chose not to be found this would be the place to do so. Does anyone know where Mr. Tanner "camped" at night while the area? May I offer a salute to anyone who spent time there without a camp-house to come to at night.

Posted by scotsirish on May 10,2011 | 05:08 PM

These photos document more than a fledgling IBWO. Note the date of the photos, the condition of the forest in the background and the clothing of the guide. All reveal that the species "was" a very early nester, possibly fledging its young before spring (vernal equinox) This circumstance has major implications for the prior searches and the common assumption that the birds would be difficult to find when nesting in spring within "leafed-out" forest. Conversely, these images suggest the birds would be foraging and active when nesting in leafless winter woods during the typical survey seasons, yet all such efforts failed to find evidence. I've seen no reference to early nesting by IBWO in association with any of the contemporary search efforts.

Posted by Patrick Leary on April 13,2011 | 06:11 PM

As to all these folks who challenge the authenticity of the pictures, I just have to smile at their ignorance... It's sad that James Tanner could not convince the powers that be to do what they had to do to save the last remaining birds... but after what did happen, we probably no longer deserve to see them! I hope that we still do have a chance, but it looks slimmer all the time.

Posted by Alan Asper on April 11,2011 | 03:03 PM

This is amazing. I remember reading Tanner's book when I was a teenager. Although I am sure many would discount it, I was privileged to see one in 1976...

Posted by Ray Nash on February 5,2011 | 11:26 AM

I wish this pesky thing would stay extinct. I have one of these crazy-eyed destructive pterodactyls causing a nuisance around my home. It chases away my song birds and flew off with one of my bird feeders the other day! It also keeps freaking my wife out when it lands on our kitchen window. Trust me, these chicken-sized things are not extinct!

Posted by J Swiss on January 28,2011 | 08:50 PM

I am so excited! I thought the pics published in the magazine looked fake, then I looked at all of the photos and am convinced they are real. To think that a species may not have crossed the line into extinction is wonderful. The diversity of our planet is one of the things that lends wonder and joy to our lives.

Posted by Nina Merklin on January 19,2011 | 01:32 PM

It is obvious that some people did NOT READ the article and only looked at the pictures. Those who commented and said the photo was fake and said things like "why would a bird fly down and perch on a man?" DID NOT READ THE ARTICLE. It is a FLEDGELING! It FELL out. It was FRIGHTENED. Wild babies are taught to FREEZE and STAY MOTIONLESS when in trouble. Please READ and gather your FACTS before commenting. But I know this falls on deaf ears because those idiots who made those commments will never return to this page to see my comment. Sigh.

Posted by Julie on November 30,2010 | 11:44 AM

The photos are all real. These photos were taken in the 1930s for God's sake, when the bird ( although already rare ) still was known to persist in the Singer tract, where these were taken. One of the photos in the series is very famous and was not hidden/lost, but printed in books and on the internet for years. And having known and worked with taxidermists and knowing something about it, I full well know you can't take a mounted specimen and place it in so many poses!! Surely some of you people are off the deep end and need therapy of some sort! A few more brain cells wouldn't hurt either.

Posted by Mark on November 30,2010 | 05:36 AM

I believe the photos are of a live bird given the pupils vary in diameter from photo to photo and the beak's position also moves. And as already pointed out, a "stuffed" bird cannot extend its wings, and the legs and toes cannot be moved without causing considerable damage to the preparation. Fledgeling birds do not behave like their parents; they are not as adept at moving about, especially on the uneven surface of a human shoulder. Given the photos' milieu there is no real reason to believe the photos aren't genuine.

Posted by Joel Pond on November 11,2010 | 05:33 PM

I recently read this article on James Tanner and the Ivory Billed Woodpecker in Smithsonian, and after reading some of these posts, I feel that it is absurd and overly cynical that people would think that his photos were faked or photoshopped. Mr. Tanner, his assistant, and his widow do not seem like the kind of people who would have a reason to do such a thing, and after reviewing the additional photos of the immature woodpecker, I believe that this is the real deal. The only known photographs of an immature Ivory Billed Woodpecker. As for recent sightings- I am hopeful that there are still isolated or surviving populations of these birds (which would make them critically endangered). It is a terrible loss to lose any kind of species forever. I hope that more evidence of these surviving birds can be found in the near future.

Posted by George Lewis on November 5,2010 | 12:06 PM

The bird sure looks fake, especially the one where it's stradeling his arm. Sure its feet are the same, but I look at my birds moving around their cage and their feet pretty much always look the same. You see some movement of feathers in some of the last pictures in the group. ? We will never know for sure if it was real or not. So the question is, why would a bird land on his back? Because it was there!!!

Posted by sue on October 29,2010 | 01:05 PM

I have special interest in the Ivory-bill. I have worked for years helping the rare forest eagles, the Harpy, and Philippine Eagles.

The confirmed sightings are enough for me to be excited, and launch my own quest to find the truth about the bird, and maybe my own expeditions to search for it. Remember--- we are the force to help save the planet, we are the only ones that care, and if WE do not act, who will? The land, the wetlands, must be prerserved.

Neil

Posted by Neil Rettig on October 27,2010 | 12:17 AM



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