Phantom woodpecker

Kip Davis and Jay Robison saw what they believed was an ivory-billed woodpecker on Thursday, one of thousands of reported sightings piling up as leaves in an east Arkansas swamp drift down.

On the typical day, someone somewhere reports that they've seen the rare bird, believed extinct until a Hot Springs kayaker said he spotted one along the Cache River near Brinkley in 2004.

Davis, the city planner for McCrory, and Robison, who works for the Arkansas Department of Economic Development, said Friday they were driving near Cotton Plant when a female ivory-billed swooped in the sky behind an oncoming truck.

"I saw something come off the tree, like the truck has spooked it," Davis said in a telephone interview from his office in McCrory. "It came by again and it had its wing span out and it just kind of glided back into the woods, and I said 'Is that what I think it is?'"

Davis, who has attended workshops about identifying an ivory-billed woodpecker, said he and Robison believe it was a female because the bird had a black head and body with white wing-tipped feathers, but no red. The male ivory-billed has a red crest.

Read more about the search for the Ivory Billed Woodpecker.