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Welcome to my Ivory Billed woodpecker pages. I will explain more about what
these pages mean on my "about me" page. For those of you who are not familiar with the ivory bill let me give a brief run
down.
The ivory Billed woodpecker is a large bird, it was(is) the largest woodpecker in North
America. It is a magnificient bird, and early settlers and early century people who saw the bird would often say, "Lord God,
what a bird!" Hence the common name, "Lord God Bird". I have my doubts that this was ever really a common name, and it no
doubt has been popularized by the few people who have spent any real time studying the bird.
The bird is supposed to be extinct. This is a complicated matter and I will get into this
more in the following pages. Suffice it to say that no one has come forward with any photographs of the bird since the
1970's and because of this along with the lack of any credible evidence brought forth to "bird experts", the bird is believed
extinct.
 The bird has mostly been ignored by the general public and except for a few
ivory bill fanatics the bird has gone unnoticed in both discussions and literature. There was only one real book on the bird
published in the 1940's, and it has only been recently that three more popular books have made the scene.
In fact, very few people 40 and under have even heard of the bird and it wasn't until 1999
that it began to create a stir. It was that year that a student of LSU came forward to tell of his sighting of a pair in the
Pearl River area of Louisiana. This story has a major significance that has not been discussed and I will discuss it at length
in these pages.
Since the 1999 sighting bird fanciers have been paying attention ot the bird and now we
hear that the bird has been "rediscovered" in the big woods of Arkansas. More on this later.
Enjoy these pages, they will be revealing and controversial, they will be visited by many
people, laypeople and the top experts as well. Sit back and enjoy the controversy that they stir,,,it's going to be a wild
ride!
William Smith
November8, 2005
thatmagicguy@yahoo.com
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