January 4, 2003

David L. and Matt L. set out to cover the area west from Six Mile Camp to the White River.  They found areas of large trees up to the point where they reached a slough that they couldn't cross.  Beyond the slough the tree size decreased substantially.  After backtracking to the southeast, they were able to pick up an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) trail and continue to the river.  Most of the area covered that day had young forest that had small numbers of woodpeckers and did not seem to be good potential IBW habitat.

Woody and Robert started on the east end of East Moon Lake and covered area north of the lake.  They reported habitat that did not look as good as yesterday's, i.e. smaller trees, but they did find a few trees with some bark scaling.  The most heavily scaled tree with horizontal gouges was at N 34 03' 30.5", W 91 08' 08.5".  They also covered some area south of the fallen Cottonwood tree.

Matt M., David H., and Bill walked south and west of East Moon Lake.  They also reported that the areas they covered had smaller trees than what they saw the day before.  David and Bill left in the early afternoon, and Matt spent a couple of hours sitting quietly near the scaling at the base of the fallen Cottonwood.

Robert left in the evening, leaving David L., Matt L., Matt M., and Woody.

January 5, 2003

Matt M. left in the morning and stopped at the Striplin Woods, a 30-acre tract of old growth forest next to the new NWR headquarters.  The woods are immediately to the southwest of where the Arkansas Highway 1 bridge crosses the White River.

David and Woody dropped Matt L. off along the loop road in the area of the stripping.  Matt spent the early morning there, then walked the ATV trail to the bridge where the loop road crosses Scrubgrass Bayou, and walked along the bayou to the west end of the Sugarberry Natural Area.  David and Woody picked him up at the end of the day at the Prairie Lakes Campground.

David and Woody put the canoe into East Moon Lake at the East Moon Lake Campground and motored (with a trolling motor) as far north and west as they could go.  They walked west from there to the White River and made a circle toward the north, east, then south.  The trees were fairly large along East Moon Lake, but dropped off in size quickly further away from the lake.  Near the White River and in the loop to the north, there were many large trees and quite a bit of dead timber, especially fallen dead timber.

January 6, 2003

Woody left the area this morning - he was not feeling well.

David and Matt returned to the loop road.  David dropped Matt off just before dawn at some potential roost holes that he had seen the previous day.  He saw and photographed a Pileated Woodpecker coming out of one of the holes.

David spent the about an hour at the fallen Cottonwood tree.  He and Matt then crossed Scrubgrass Bayou in a canoe and measured some large trees in the Sugarberry Natural Area.  After an hour there, they left the area and headed to the Striplin Woods.  The woods there have many very old, large trees.  We measured several large oaks, pecans, and a large sweetgum.

Summary

Though no Ivory-billed Woodpeckers were seen or heard during the search, the size of the trees and the vastness of the refuge would seem to be suitable to support several pairs of the birds.  The trees in many of the areas we covered seemed to be, on the whole, larger than the trees I saw in the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area in Louisiana.

The bark scaling that was seen in several places was interesting for a number of reasons.  First, it was similar to the scaling that I saw in the Pearl River area.  Also, it was extensive and much of it was very fresh as evidenced by the color of the exposed wood and the presence of bark chips on the ground on top of leaves and other forest floor matter.

I feel that further searches should be done both in this area and other areas of the White River NWR.  Only a small fraction of the refuge was searched, so future searches would help to determine how much of the refuge has potential habitat for IBWs.

Several of the search team took tree and bird point counts.  If this data is of interest to anyone, it could be compiled and summarized.  David L. and Woody each compiled a list of all birds seen during the search and have sent that information to Richard Hines for his purposes in updating the refuge checklist.  Approximately 60 species were tallied.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Richard Hines for his assistance in getting a permit, accommodations, maps, etc.  The search was made much easier because of the help Richard provided. 

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