These two photographs, taken by Tanner in 1938 and published in his dissertation, have not been otherwise widely disseminated or (to the best of my knowledge) reprinted elsewhere. Each is interesting in its own right, and not just because they add to the small body of indisputable ivorybill imagery; the first shows the behavior of a near-fledgling (Sonny Boy) in the nest and the second for the position of the male’s crest, which is more recurved than in most or all other stills. Another series of rare images is here. Images are Courtesy of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. 
Two More Rare Ivory-billed Woodpecker Images
6 thoughts on “Two More Rare Ivory-billed Woodpecker Images”
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Amazing pics.
How wonderful. Thanks for sharing these, Mark.
In the “NESTLING IVORY-BILL PEERING…” photo, the position of the bird in the cavity reminds me very much of the bird in the blurry color images from Kountze, TX.
Indeed it does! I had the same thought and was considering an addendum that mentioned it. What seems most significant is that the person who took those photos would not have been aware of this one or others that evoke it from 1935.
Very cool. Thank you for sharing your discoveries!
It would have been great to have seen the bad pictures taken back in the day. I assume there would have been tons of them that were just thrown out because they didn’t come out well. But those blurry pictures of a confirmed ivorybill would have been handy now to perhaps show that this is how an ivorybill photographs and whether the bad pictures of today are normal or not.
All of these clear pictures were taken from blinds at known nest sites, and those nesting birds were the only ones that could reliably be found, let alone photographed. There are a few blurry pictures of birds from that family group in flight that I suspect would be controversial today.