Lukas, I'm halfheartedly thinking about taking a trip to southeast Louisiana just to paddle around and look for the goddamn bird. Have you ever seen a pileated woodpecker? They're enormous, scary almost, and the ivory billed woodpecker is even bigger. Maybe it's just the skeptic in me, or maybe I'm just a hater--but what do you think the chances are that this bird actually does not exist? There's a lot of unfelled timber, not to mention federal funding, involved in this bird's revivification.

I understand the urge, but don't do it. Assuming the bird is there (and I believe it is, the benefits of a conspiracy would be too indirect for the thing to get off the ground) the worst thing for it would be for birdhunters to swarm the habitat. I hear Montana's nice this time of year...