The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is one of the largest woodpecker species in the world and extremely rare member of the woodpecker family, Picidae. It is officially listed as an endangered species, but by the end of the 20th century had widely been considered extinct.
Reports of at least one male bird in Arkansas in 2004 and 2005 were reported in April 2005 by a team led by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.
The bird is shiny blue-black with extensive white markings on its neck and on both the upper and lower trailing edges of its wings. It has a pure white bill and displays a prominent top crest, red in the male and black in the female. These characteristics distinguish it from the smaller and darker-billed Pileated Woodpecker. Its drum is a single or double rap, and its alarm call, a kent or hant, sounds like a toy trumpet repeated in a series or as a double note.