Bird watchers have long believed that the regal ivory-billed woodpecker was extinct. The last sighting of ivorybills, the biggest North American woodpecker species, was in 1941.
Then in 1999, a college student spotted a pair of tall, unusual birds in a Louisiana forest. He told Van Remsen, a bird expert at Louisiana State University, about the birds' unique call and the female bird's black headfeathers. Remsen was certain they were ivorybills! Last week, Remsen led a team of hopeful experts in search of the long-lost bird. The searchers will spend 30 days in southeast Louisiana. Some will try to record the bird's tin-horn-like call. Says bird expert John W. Fitzpatrick: "The idea that it may live just has this huge ray of hope inside all of us."