Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus Principalis)

The Ivory-billed Woodpecker (scientific name Campephilus principalis) is an extremely rare, endangered (it was formally thought to be extinct but recent sighting seem to show other wise) bird. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is the second largest Woodpecker in the world (slightly smaller than the Imperial Woodpecker which is native to Mexico and is equally as endangered do to the last positive sighting being in 1958 so it is probably extinct). The way to recognize an Ivory-billed Woodpecker (which would be rare to do due to its probable extinction) is its coloring and markings. The bird has a shiny blue-black body and is extensively marked in white on its neck and on both of the upper and lower trailing ledges of their wings. It also has a pure white bill and a top crest (red on males and black on females like the patch on the Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers). These features distinguish it from the Pileated Woodpecker and it also has the basic features of all woodpeckers.

The Ivory-billed woodpecker seems to prefer hardwood swamps and pine forests vast with dead and decaying trees. Prior to the American Civil War the Ivory-billed Woodpecker ranged from east Texas to North Carolina due to this type of habitat. Their diet consists of mainly larvae and wood-boring beetles, but it also feeds on seeds, fruit, and other types of insects. It is able to search the bark for insects by using its enormous white bill to pull off dead bark. They usually lay clutches of 2-5 eggs and it takes from 3-5 weeks for the eggs to be incubated (by both parents, a characteristic shared by doves).

Due to, many factors to the environment, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker has widely been considered to be extinct. Its population was greatly decimated due to heavy logging activity and hunting for specimens. By 1938 about 20 individual Ivory-billed Woodpeckers remained in the wild and by 1944, the last known one was gone. The species was added to the endangered species list in 1967and later accessed as extinct by the IUCN but later was changed to "critically endangered". There have been many recent sighting despite this. In 1999 there was an unconfirmed sighting of the birds in the Pearl River region of Louisiana by forestry student, David Kulivan. Than in 2002 there was another expedition of the area when on January 27^th they found signs of woodpeckers and recorded sounds similar to the birds' call (although it is thought to probably be the echoes of gunshots). The most recent sighting was during an expedition made by 17 authors led by the Cornell lab of Ornithology where they witnessed 15 sightings of the rare bird during this period.