At about 1:30 P.M.

, while kayaking through the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in

Arkansas, Gene Sparling of Hot Springs, Arkansas, watched as a huge and unusual
woodpecker with a red crest flew toward him and landed on a nearby tree. The bird hitched
around the tree in what he later described as a "herky jerky" or "cartoon-like" motion. Sparling
noticed several field marks suggesting that the bird was an Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

About a week later, Tim Gallagher, editor of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's Living
Bird magazine, and Bobby Harrison, associate professor at Oakwood College in Huntsville,
Alabama, interviewed Sparling about his sighting after reading a post on a web site. Gallagher
and Harrison had been following up on ivory-bill sightings in preparation for a book Gallagher
was writing. Sparling's description was so convincing that Gallagher and Harrison traveled to
Arkansas so that Sparling could take them back to the bayou where he had seen the bird.

February 27, 2004: Gallagher recalled, "On the second day of our trip, at approximately 1:15 in
the afternoon, a large black-and-white woodpecker with the characteristic color pattern of an
Ivory-billed Woodpecker flew across the bayou at close range in front of Harrison and me. We
cried out simultaneously, 'Ivory-bill!' and paddled frantically toward shore. As soon as we
landed, we took off through the boot-sucking muck and mire of the swamp, climbing up and over
fallen trees and through branches, with camcorder in hand and running. Although the bird
landed on tree trunks briefly a couple of times, we weren't able to catch up with it or take
video."