Businesses hoping woodpecker helps tourism take wing

BRINKLEY, Ark. — This time of year, ducks flock by the hundreds to the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, where herds of white-tailed deer graze under a canopy of 1,000-year-old trees. Near a cypress swamp, the sun warms the autumn air, making this bottomland a paradise for wild turkeys, foraging squirrels and insects the size of kumquats.

Somewhere in the wilderness probably lives a bird — or birds — once thought extinct: the ivory-billed woodpecker, with its 30-inch wingspan and distinctive white stripes on a coal-black body.

When Cornell University ornithologists announced in April that the ivory-bill, the largest woodpecker in North America, had been rediscovered, bird lovers worldwide rejoiced.

And here in Monroe County, where one-quarter of residents live in poverty, merchants stocked up on bird-related souvenirs and waited for tourists.

But with fresh sightings of the ivory-bill yet to be confirmed, "We're still waiting for the tourist part," hairdresser Penny Childs said.

Outside her salon, woodpecker T-shirts hang from a tree, swinging in the breeze. Inside, nearly half of the establishment has been taken over with woodpecker souvenirs: candles, artwork, books. Childs has created the $25 woodpecker haircut: a spiked hairdo accented with red, black and white paint.

"It's like waiting for Christmas to get here," Childs said of what residents hope will be a big winter bird-watching season.

Folks here knew that few visitors would brave the mosquitoes, snakes and wilting heat of an Arkansas summer to look for the bird, said Larry Mallard, manager of the White River National Wildlife Refuge, where ornithologists taped what is believed to be the ivory-bill's call. Better to wait until the dead of winter, he said, when the dense foliage has dropped and there is a better chance of spotting the skittish bird or hearing its signature rap, a loud double-knock.

The changing season has brought a second round of Cornell biologists to the woods of eastern Arkansas, camcorders and binoculars in tow. For the next six months, the team will comb 550,000 acres of forest and swampland in an effort to photograph the bird.

If, as a bonus, searchers find a roost or nest hole, "that would be unbelievably thrilling," Cornell project spokeswoman Connie Bruce said.

Ivory-billed woodpeckers once roamed forests across the South, feeding by peeling the bark off trees to reach insects underneath. Their numbers dwindled as forests were cut for lumber and cleared for farming.

The last confirmed sighting, before April's announcement, was in 1944 in Louisiana.

In February 2004, a kayaker floating down a stream in the Cache River National Refuge spotted the bird. That led to an intensive, yearlong search that yielded multiple credible sightings and a grainy four-second video of what is believed to be the ivory-bill in flight.

Some people here wish the bird had stayed hidden.

Sam Gillam, 22, worries that curious humans will upset a delicate balance of nature that allowed the ivory-bill to survive, unobserved, for decades. "He was back here all those years by himself. He was doing something right," Gillam said. "When you get a lot of people looking for him, something might happen to change where he lives, or people might just scare him off. I think they should just leave him alone."

Others grumble that federal and state laws meant to protect the rare bird might interfere with deer hunting and duck hunting in the area. "People were raised here and hunted here all their lives," said Billie Henry, 58. "There will be hard feelings if they have to change what they're used to."

But many others in town don't see how anything but good can come from the celebrity bird.

"If people want to come all the way out here to look for a woodpecker, we welcome them. Any time people come and spend money, that helps the town," restaurant owner Gene DePriest said.