In my narrative, prodigious gusts during a hurricane (like Katrina), felled an adjacent diseased tree that formerly stood to the right of the woodpecker nest tree seen here. When the massive, disease-worn tree crashed to the ground, it hit its smaller neighbor, snapping the nest tree at the weakened site of the nest hole.

We see the pair of Ivory-bills returning to their ruined nest, much the way human residents of the Gulf Coast returned to assess their ruined homes. The female Ivory-billed Woodpecker peers inside while the male watches. Adding other climate change-related pressures to those of intense storms, makes the chance of a surviving remnant population of Ivory-bills remote.

Darryl Wheye   Los Altos, CA USA

Title:   The Last Ivory-billed Woodpeckers

Species:   Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis)
Date:   2006
Medium:   Pencil
Dimensions:   37cm x 66 cm (14.5" x 26")
unframed Giclee prints available for display or purchase through the artist's website: Darryl Wheye.com