Ivory-billed woodpeckers once ranged throughout the southeastern United States, from southern Florida and the Gulf Coast, north to North Carolina and southern Illinois, and west to southeastern Oklahoma and eastern Texas. They were also widespread on the main island of Cuba. Extensive logging of their primary forest habitat greatly reduced their range in both North America and Cuba. They were presumed extinct for a number of years before being rediscovered and videotaped in eastern Arkansas in April of 2004. Currently the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, in Monroe County, Arkansas is the only place where ivory-billed woodpeckers are known with any certainty to persist. The last confirmed sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker in Cuba was in 1987. (Jackson, 2002)
Ivory-billed woodpeckers require expansive areas of continuous forest with large trees, and they must have a constant supply of dead or dying trees in which they can excavate cavities and forage for beetle larvae, their staple food. For this reason, they frequent areas of recent disturbance by fire, flood, or hurricane. These large birds prefer forests with relatively open canopies in which they can fly unhindered. Given these requirements, they nest in a diverse array of tree species, including pines, bald cypress, cabbage palmetto, sugarberry, and red maple.
Ivory-billed woodpeckers once inhabited both the upland and lowland forests of the southeastern U.S. However, as the upland pine forests were logged in the 19th century, the birds' habitat shrunk to only include bald cypress swamps and bottomland forests of sweetgum, Nuttall's oak, willow oak, water oak, sugarberry, green ash, and American elm. The Big Woods area of Arkansas is one such bottomland forest.
In Cuba, ivory-billed woodpeckers once occupied both pine and hardwood forests. By the 1950's, they were restricted to a small region in the east characterized by logged pine forest interrupted by occasional hardwood stands along streams. In this area they nested primarily in large dead pines. (Jackson, 2002; Lamb, 1958)
Ivory-billed woodpeckers are the largest woodpeckers in the United States. They measure 48 to 53 cm long, weigh 450 to 570 g, and have wingspans of about 78 cm. Males tend to be slightly larger than females. Ivory-billed woodpeckers have glossy black plumage that contrasts sharply with the white stripes that run from the base of each wing to the sides of the head. The inner primary and secondary wing feathers are also white, and these feathers form a white shield on the back when the wings are folded. Female ivory-billed woodpeckers have a black crests on their heads, males have bright red crests. The irises are a pale lemon-yellow color and the nostrils are covered by tufts of white feathers that keep out debris when the birds are chiseling. The legs and feet are gray, and the toes are long, each bearing a sharp, curved, black claw. Ivory-billed woodpeckers get their name from their distinctive white, chisel-shaped, 7.6 centimeter-long bills, which function as multi-purpose tools for obtaining food, excavating nest cavities, and communicating with conspecifics. (Jackson, 2002)
Ivory-billed woodpeckers are presumed to be monogamous. No information is available on the occurrence of extra-pair copulations or extra-pair fertilizations in this species. (Jackson, 2002)
Because of the rarity of ivory-billed woodpeckers, little data is available on their reproduction. Limited data suggests that ivory-billed woodpeckers begin building nests in late January, lay eggs in February, and that the young fledge in April. Given this timespan, it is likely that these birds follow the same general pattern followed by other North American woodpeckers: nest cavity building takes about 2 weeks, egg laying takes 2 to 5 days, and incubation takes about 2 weeks. Clutch sizes of 1 to 6 eggs have been reported, with an average of 2.7. The young are known to leave the nest about 5 weeks after hatching, and they have an unusually long period of association with their parents that may last a year or more after fl