Pennsylvania Researchers Find Once-Extinct Bird, and It Has a Mohawk
Pennsylvania Researchers with the National Aviary in Pittsburgh have stumbled upon a pretty awesome discovery. According to a new report, they found and filmed an ivory-billed woodpecker in Louisiana.
So, why is this such a find? Well, the special woodpecker, which is “iconic,” was thought to be extinct. In fact, back in 2021, the Washington Post did a story about this species and how it was, sadly, being declared extinct. According to the Washington Post, the woodpecker gets “its nickname because it was so big and so beautiful that those blessed to spot it blurted out the Lord’s name.”
At the time, the Washington Post quoted the scientist who wrote the obit. “This is not an easy thing,” Amy Trahan, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, said, adding that the bird “no longer exists.” She continued, reportedly tearing up, “Nobody wants to be a part of that. Just having to write those words was quite difficult. It took me a while.”
Pennsylvania Researchers
But, perhaps those tears are unwarranted. According to the Pennsylvania researchers with the National Aviary, they found and shot images of the ivory-billed woodpecker on motion-activated trail cameras in Louisiana. They also reportedly discovered the birds in “bottomland hardwood forests.” Apparently, they used drones in 2019 to scan the treetops for the birds and found them. “You have very scarce birds that tend to be very high up in the canopy in dense forests and they’re very hard to document, and that is a great achievement that we’ve been able to get the imagery,” one of the co-authors of the study, Mark Michaels, said.
What I find cool is that this bird looks like it has a Mohawk! Check out a photo above. Welcome back, ivory-billed woodpecker.
