Texas Fauna Project

Ivory-billed Woodpecker

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Fred Collins is a wildlife biologist based in Houston, where he served as director of the Cypress Top Historic Park, the Kleb Woods Nature Center, and the John Paul Landing Environmental Education Center. In addition, for over 50 years, he has had a keen interest in the ivory-billed woodpecker. Here he describes the limits on our knowledge of the bird, much of which is based on observations of a single pair of birds, at one site, in a long-gone virgin forest, by a single reporter, James Tanner. Further, Tanner's accounts suggest that the bird had nomadic tendencies (even he had trouble locating them), which could explain the mystery and challenge of locating and studying them in the years since.