The first trip of the season was relatively uneventful, although we heard possible single and double knocks on Thursday morning and afternoon. Unusually heavy hunting activity and bad weather kept us out of the field on Saturday the 22nd and most of the Sunday the 23rd. Peggy Rardin Shrum joined me from Tuesday through Friday.  Tommy Michot was with us Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and Steve Pagans joined us Wednesday through Friday.

Tommy has been very good at encouraging us all to do more stopping and listening. My focus on looking for feeding sign has probably led me to do more walking than I should.  We’ve also started experimenting with playback of a couple of the March calls, cleaned up, amplified and looped by Phil Vanbergen and would like to offer it other searchers for their use. Feel free to email me for an MP3 if you’re unable to pull it from the site.

The amplification and cleaning up highlights the differences between many of our sounds and those recorded in the Singer Tract (though I still think the species involved is the same). Agitation and disturbance may account for the shorter, sharper sound of the John’s Bayou calls, and as has been discussed in prior posts, written descriptions of the calls, including Tanner’s, point to a good deal of variation.

We observed that playback of these calls often provoked responses from woodpeckers of all kinds at close to the same level as Barred Owl playbacks, though this was impressionistic not quantified. Crows and raptors sometimes seemed to react as well. I played around with some other sounds chosen more or less at random – Goldfinch, Blue Jay, Ring-billed Gull, Black-backed Woodpecker. None of these seemed to have much effect, though the Black-backed did appear to evoke a smaller number of woodpecker reactions.

Water levels were low enough to enable us to get into some of the less accessible areas, but the need to  deal with our trail cams prevented us from spending a lot of time exploring. There were no indications of woodpecker activity on the target trees, and we continue to have problems with camera malfunctions. Two of the four we had deployed seem to have failed since June; one of these may have been damaged by a tree fall, but both cams have the same issue – shutting down after booting up. We’re trying to identify the glitch and determine whether the cameras are reparable.

Tuesday, October 17

We visited the northern sector to check on our two northernmost camera deployments. The first of these (now discontinued) was a standing hickory with signs of insect damage. Tommy and Phil Vanbergen had changed out the batteries in August, and 64% of the charge remained. The second target is a hickory about 200 yards away that had lost its top in a spring storm and an adjoining beech that had also been damaged. Since August, a large hickory had fallen, bringing down a number of limbs from other trees in the process and perhaps damaging the camera without hitting directly. In addition, a large fallen oak limb obscured most of the trunk of the main target. We pulled the camera when we discovered the apparent malfunction. On the return hike, we headed east to a part of the area I had not previously explored and that has had little coverage.

Wednesday, October 18

On the morning of the 18th, I stopped for breakfast at the place closest to our search area.  Early on weekday mornings, it’s a hangout for law enforcement officers and older folks, as well as various people passing through on their way to work. A sheriff’s deputy and a couple of older men had been in the place on Tuesday, discussing local history. All three were familiar faces, as no doubt, I was to them.

For the first time, this particular bunch engaged me in conversation, asking whether I was hunting. I said no, I was looking for birds and taking pictures. They asked what ‘what kind of birds’, and I said woodpeckers. “What kind of woodpeckers?” “Rare ones”, I replied. They initially thought I was referring to “itty bitty ones”, Red-cockadeds, but I explained that I meant big woodpeckers. “You mean those Indian Hens” (meaning Pileated), one asked. I told them what I was looking for was similar but not the same and took the opportunity to show them pictures from my iBird Pro app.

The Deputy Sheriff and one of the men recognized the Pileated but said they’d never seen an ivorybill. The third guy pointed to the ivorybill image, and said, “I used to see them when I was hunting over on . . . but I gave up hunting seven years ago.” This is the second or third local claim I’ve heard from this area, which is several miles away from the focus of our efforts across a major highway.  It looks decent on Google Earth. While I’ve been wary of engaging in too much conversation with locals, it sometimes provides interesting intel, and this evolved organically; I didn’t reveal our location; and I hope it won’t result in too much gossip.

I met up with Tommy and Peggy, and we went to the southern sector to check on the other camera deployment (another tall hickory stub) to discover that one of the two cameras had failed in the same manner as the one at the northern location. We changed the batteries on the functioning camera and pulled the malfunctioning one. We met up with Steve, who had arrived later and followed another route, in the early afternoon and hiked out with him.

Thursday, October 19th

Peggy, Tommy, and I devoted the morning in the northern sector, exploring the less-visited eastern side. At approximately 8:35 we did a series of double knocks, which did not produce any immediate responses. We remained in place, and shortly before 9, we heard several single and double knocks from south of our location.  We were not recording at the time, and I considered them to be moderate possibles. We met up with Steve, who had been some distance north of us, about an hour later; he had heard our ADKs but not the apparent responses.

In late morning, we headed west and moved the functioning trail cam to the nearby hickory/beech blowdown. This is where Peggy, Tommy, Phil, and I had heard some knocks in June. It took a group effort, but we were able to move the large oak limb that was obstructing the view of the hickory bole. We redeployed the camera, trained on the bole. Given the season, it seems unlikely that this stub will be scaled in the next several months, but I anticipate leaving these camera traps in place for an extended period.

We stayed in this spot for lunch and did a little more exploring in the immediate vicinity before heading back toward the trailhead in the early afternoon.  At approximately 2 pm, as we were approaching the spot where the March recordings were made, we heard several ambient knocks, also moderate possibles, but were unable to generate any responses.

There was more shooting than usual in the area during this trip and there were distant industrial noises from time to time. These were all easy to distinguish from the possible SKs and DKs.

Friday, October 20th

Peggy, Steve, and I returned to the same vicinity and spent our time in the less visited eastern half, some of which was familiar to Steve. In addition to be being hard to reach, the terrain in this area is difficult, making it more difficult to explore.

We did not see or hear anything of note, although I found some suggestive older scaling on boles – one example on a sweet gum and one on the dead side of a still live hickory. I’d estimate that this work is at least a year old. The hickory work is of the kind I think may be diagnostic for ivorybill, and the sweet gum work is interesting for being on the bole and also for apparent large exit tunnels. I also find the excavation on the hickory to be of potential interest. The wood does not appear to be soft, and the digging does not look like typical Pileated Woodpecker work. In a couple of instances, Tanner mentioned how Ivory-billed Woodpecker work resembles that of the Red-bellied Woodpecker except for appearing to have been done by a larger animal. This hickory excavation may fall into that category.

Saturday, October 21

I met Peggy at the breakfast place, which was unusually busy and filled with hunters. It became clear that I had not picked the best time to be in Louisiana, as this was a big hunting weekend. In addition, the weather forecast called for heavy rain by late morning. Peggy had a long drive ahead, and we agreed that there would be little point in going into the field. She left for home, and I opted to drive around, specifically to see if I could find any easy access point for searching in the vicinity that local people had mentioned and also to scout other nearby areas for potential. I had very limited success, getting a look at part of the bottom, which looked like it might have potential at a cursory glance.

The rains came on Saturday night and continued through Sunday morning.

Sunday, October 22

The rains kept me out of the field until noon, at which time I went to the eastern sector and and spent about three wet and unpleasant hours there. It rained sporadically, avian activity was generally low, and visibility was poor due to cloud cover. I didn’t see or hear anything of interest.

On Monday, I awoke to an email with a very detailed account of a sighting by someone I’ve known for several years. I may devote my next trip to following up on this report and to looking at areas in another part of the state. In any event, the next post will likely be the final in the series that this one has interrupted.