Since this is off-topic I made sure to clear it first with Norm Saunders. 
Previously this appeared on the Talbot Bird Club and Washington College
environmental studies listservs.  I've heard that several other Maryland
folks will also be going to Arkansas.  

PRELUDE TO ARKANSAS - MY UPCOMING CORNELL IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER SEARCH.

Last summer over 300 people applied to be volunteers in Cornell's IBWO
project in Arkansas.  112 were accepted.  Not as rigorous a screening and
competition as an astronaut would face, but I'll be there February 20
through March 5.  It was somewhat like applying for a job, with references,
experience detailed, etc.  Prerequisites included experience in small
boats, with birding, map reading, and some survival skills (!).  I was
surprised not to be asked any health-related questions.  I can now say that
in 1958 I applied to Cornell and was rejected but in 2005 was accepted.

We will be active for the entire daylight period unless the rain is
torrential, either sitting all day in a blind, a canoe, or walking/wading,
or a combination of these.  It is said to be surprisingly cold, especially
on the feet.  Low-down bottomland swamps, near the cold water all day. 
Arkansas' all-time low is minus 27 degrees Fahrenheit (Feb. 13, 1905, in
the extreme NW part of the state).  Never gets this cold where we will be,
but it promises to be exhausting and uncomfortable.  

Cornell provides lodging, canoes, GPS units, video equipment, training,
supervision, and, also, such is their largesse: salt, pepper, eggs, coffee,
and tea as well as a microwave and washer & dryer.  Volunteers are required
to wear camouflage, bring chest or hip waders, bedding, and all the other
food they may need, a compass, etc. 

The Cornell project involves stints by a series of "cohorts" lasting 2
weeks running from this past December 5 to sometime into the early spring. 
Leaves will be off the trees for good visibility.  IBWOs are presumed to be
most vocal in late winter and early spring.  

One group of cohorts, 8 or more persons, will be at or near the White River
N.W.R., a huge area of over 120,000 acres.  My cohort will be north of
there in the Cache River N.W.R. and Bayou de View areas, a somewhat less
immense region with often very narrow leads of suitable bottomland forest,
suitable at least as far as IBWOs are presumed to be concerned.  Like some
other recently established N.W.R.'s, Cache River has checkerboard or
patchwork holdings interspersed with state and privately-owned land.  

Bayou de View is the setting of many of the recent sightings.  Arkansas
reports of the past few years have been fleeting ones whose total combined
time is only a few minutes, one reason so many are skeptical, including
quite a few of the most respected birders in North America.  Another reason
for skepticism is that there are sometimes Pileated Woodpeckers with
abnormal white areas on their wings.  A further reason is that many believe
the recent video is in fact of a pileated.  One person I know says he's
seen better video of Big Foot.

As a compulsive diarist, the detailing of whatever adventures lie ahead for
me will be somewhat circumscribed by the confidentiality agreement we all
signed.  In mid-March I'll be able to give a general account of what
happened but any sightings of IBWOs, hearings of the double knock, etc.,
will be kept under wraps as I understand it, released by Cornell when they
deem it propitious.

I am one who is a firm believer although the eloquence and logic of some of
the skeptics at times has caused me to sometimes wonder.  But enough good
people over the years (and decades) have reported IBWOs, and in half a
dozen states, so that I can't believe some of these are not good sightings.
 Some of these good people have been subjected to scorn and ridicule, or
worse, their reputations damaged for the rest of their lives.  

The recent pattern of sightings lends credence to a couple of views of the
species that were not widely held 65+ years ago when Tanner conducted most
of his field work: 1) IBWOs may be quite nomadic.  In the face of degraded
habitat they must wander widely to satisfy their specialized foraging
needs.  2) They are, or have become, extremely shy and furtive.   

East central Arkansas where we'll be is a morass of extensive bottomland
swamps, sometimes thought of as the Amazon of North America.  Much of it is
remote, where cell phones do not work.  Black Bears are common.  So are
Water Moccasins in the warm months.  There are Bobcats.  Some of the trees
are said to be gigantic.  Water levels in the bottomland vary by 18 feet or
more.  Right now they are abnormally low.  However, Arkansas also has huge
agricultural areas, is a major producer of soy beans, rice, cotton, and
chickens - enterprises not favorable to maintaining IBWO habitat.    

My cohort of 6 will be lodged at the town of Cotton Plant, not too far NE
from where Johnny Cash lived as a boy.  The local diner, Gene's, serves
Ivory-billed Woodpecker burgers.  Amenities such as Walmart are not too far
away.  The White River cohorts are by contrast a long way from civilization
and must lay on food for a week at a time and live in trailers.  By some
streak of luck my cohort will include 3 close friends.  The 2 others in our
cohort I do not know but one is from the Ten Thousand Islands N.W.R. near
Naples, Florida.  

Bob Ake of Norfolk is a retired chemistry professor from Old Dominion
University.  He has extensive, worldwide birding experience and has, for
example, traveled in 2005 to New Guinea and Vietnam.  Years ago he spent a
sabbatical in Afghanistan.  Bob has recently conducted a series of bird
surveys at both Fisherman Island and Back Bay national wildlife refuges and
regularly birds Dismal Swamp.  Along with Paul DuMont he pioneered
organized sea bird trips off of the North Carolina Outer Banks in the
1970s.

Martha (Marty) Daniels, from Camden, SC, lives on Mulberry Plantation, the
ancestral home of the celebrated Civil War diarist, Mary Chesnut.  She is
an accomplished horsewoman, a veteran of various Outward Bound ventures,
and experienced with raptor trapping and censusing, especially in
Washington state and at Kiptopeke, Virginia. 

Carl Perry, of Mountville, PA, is an engineer with Armstrong Tile, has been
heavily invested in IBWOs for years.  He's already been to the Arkansas
areas as well as the Louisiana ones.  He is a skilled birder, co-founder of
the Cape Hatteras Christmas count, and a veteran of and organizer of the
Delaware May birding marathons I used to participate in.  

Carl is a co-author/investigator along with my friend, senior author Paul
W. Sykes, Jr., Steve Holzman, and others of what they refer to as a
forensic approach to detecting IBWOs: they have made 100s of measurements
of woodpecker gouge marks on trees in the Southeast.  They believe that
IBWO gouge marks are almost always bigger (i.e., wider) and neater than
those of Pileated Woodpeckers.  

Paul has even measured gouge marks inside of several IBWO nesting
cavity/tree sections preserved at Harvard, Cornell, and elsewhere.  They
have also been investigating the species of insects that bore into trees as
grubs or larvae.  Cerambycid beetle larvae, favored by IBWOs, are as large
as big, krinkle-cut French fries.  Paul et al. are working on several
related journal articles.   

There are some areas of concern about all of these recent events:  

1.  One is that apparently the federal $$$ being thrown into the IBWO grist
mill will not comprise extra environmental funding but will be taken away
from other projects.  

2.  Another is what I call the Cornellcentrism of it all.  Cornell has
invested heavily in this with time, money, equipment, manpower, planning,
etc.  I sometimes wonder what projects at the Cornell Laboratory of
Ornithology may be suffering as a result.  

3.  I have also heard that there is some friction between Cornell and The
Nature Conservancy as well as the various state and federal agencies
involved, perhaps because Cornell is controlling so much of this IBWO
project.  

4.  There is concern about the effect that researchers and searchers, such
as us, may have on the IBWOs, no matter how stealthy, circumspect, and
well-camouflaged we may be.

5.  Let us hope that the reputations of those heavily invested in this are
not damaged the way those of George Lowery and John Dennis were.

6.  If Cornell, or someone, does not come up with ironclad evidence pretty
soon in the form of photographs, videos, recordings, or whatever it will be
something of a tragedy for all concerned. 

7.  Last is the alienation of some people.  For example, I do not know why
respected woodpecker authority, Dr. Jerome A. Jackson, was not brought in
at the very start.  David Kulivan, who reported the Louisiana IBWOs a few
years ago, will not talk about his sightings anymore, refuses interviews,
works for the N.R.A.  

One of the most amazing IBWO stories concerns the 3 Alexander Wilson shot
near Wilmington, NC.  One was wounded.  Wilson took it to his hotel room in
Wilmington, left the room for a while, and returned to find that this bird
had made the room a shambles, almost excavating a hole through the wall. 
He then tied it to a mahogany table, left again, and returned to find the
sturdy table severely damaged ... all of this, remember, by a wounded bird.

One can easily spend days on Google and other search engines reading the
latest reports, rumors, and theories.  For example on January 12 Google's
"advanced search" retrieved 225 hits that contained the words Sykes and
Ivory-billed Woodpecker (IBWO), 169 with David Kulivan and IBWO, 17,200
with Tim Gallagher and IBWO.  Many of these are trivial or duplicate.  Many
aren't.  Aside from that method, the following references for me are some
of the key ones.

SOME SELECTED, INDISPENSABLE IBWO REFERENCES (as chance would have it I've
received for review from "Library Journal" the  4 asterisked * titles):

Bent, Arthur Cleveland.  Life histories of North American woodpeckers. 
Dover Publications, Inc.  1939 (reprinted in 1964 by Dover).  334p.  cf:
pp. 1-12.  In general all of the Bent life histories contain a wealth of
anecdotes, individual records, and detailed information plus superior
illustrative material (photographs) that still make them very vital, even
in the face of the splendid Birds of North America series (q.v., under
Jackson, 2002, below).

*Cokinos, Christopher.  Hope is the thing with feathers: a personal
chronicle of vanished birds.  Tarcher/Putnam.  2000.  359pp.  cf.: pp.
59-117.  Beautifully written, poignant book, the result of much research.

*Gallagher, Tim.  The grail bird: hot on the trail of the Ivory-billed
Woodpecker.  Houghton Mifflin.  2005.  272pp.  A dramatic telling,
especially of the events of the past few years.  

Hoose, Phillip.  The race to save the Lord God Bird.  2004.  Melanie Kroup
Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  196pp.  Well-illustrated review of the
bird's historic status.  

Jackson, Jerome A.  In search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.  Smithsonian
Books.  2004.  294pp.  My personal favorite of the recent books.    

____.  Ivory-billed Woodpecker.  Birds of North America, no. 711.  2002. 
28pp.  An excellent summation of what was known then, including an
annotated list (pp. 3-5) of significant sightings and reports from 1924
through 1995.

'NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS', volume 59, no. 2, 2005.  This issue has these
articles, the sine qua non of recent IBWO information:
1.  Rosenberg, Kenneth V., Ronald W. Rohrbach & Martjan Lammertink, "An
overview of Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) sightings in
eastern Arkansas in 2004-2005," pp. 198-206.
2.  "Ethical considerations for seekers of Ivory-billed Woodpecker: special
applications and amplifications of the ABA Code of Ethics," p. 207. 
3.  "Large woodpeckers: paintings by David Allen Sibley," pp. 208-209. 
Superb paintings, as one would expect.
4.  Spahr, Timothy, "Searches for Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus
principalis) in the Apalachicola River basin of Florida in 2003," pp.
210-215 (also contains an additional Sibley painting)
5.  Shoch, David T., "Forest management for Ivory-billed Woodpeckers
(Campephilus principalis): a case study in managing an uncertainty," pp.
216-221.
6.  Brinkley, Edward S., "Editor's notebook," pp. 228-229. 

Peterson, Roger Tory.  Birds over America.  Dodd, Mead & Co.  1948.  I've
misplaced my copy but BOA has a wonderful chapter of RTP's observation of 2
females in the Singer Tract in 1941.

____ & James Fisher.  Wild America: the record of a 30,000 mile journey
around the continent by a distinguished naturalist and his British
colleague.  Houghton Mifflin.  1955.  cf.: pp. 147-157, "Ivory-bill quest."

Tanner, James T.  The Ivory-billed Woodpecker.  Dover Publications, Inc. 
1942 (reprinted in 1966 by Dover).  111pp.  The bedrock, baseline life
history.  Still the best source for such information.

*Weidensaul, Scott.  The ghost with trembling wings: science, wishful
thinking, and the search for lost species.  North Point Press/Farrar,
Straus & Giroux.  2002.  341pp.  pp. 47-67 and briefly elsewhere in the
book. 

*_____.  Return to wild America: a yearlong search for the continent's
natural soul.  North Point Press.  2005.  394pp.  Retraces the route, 50
years earlier, of Roger Tory Peterson & James Fisher as described in their
splendid Wild America.  Has a chapter on searching a promising IBWO area. 

www.birdingamerica.com  Mary Scott's website full of reports by others of
recent experiences in Arkansas and elsewhere and includes her own
adventures.

Best to all.-Harry Armistead, 523 E. Durham St., Philadelphia, PA
19119-1225.  215-248-4120.  Please, any off-list replies to: 
harryarmistead at hotmail dot com  (never, please, to 74077.3176 ....)