The smoking gun?

In my personal opinion, at this point, Cornell's rediscovery story has pretty much crumbled to dust. I've been looking carefully at the various retellings of Gene Sparling's February 2004 sighting, and to me, the evidence overwhelmingly points to a mis-ID of an abnormal Pileated.

I think this article contains the smoking gun. Since Sparling publicly posted these words before he was influenced by Cornell, I think this description is closest to reality:

Sparling also wrote in his posting, “I also (and I hesitate to say this) saw a Pileated woodpecker that was way too big, the white and black colors seemed to be reversed on the wings, and the white was yellowish off white. You birders know what is inferred, but I don’t have the conviction to say.”

Now what Ivory-bill would have "yellowish off white" coloration?!

By the time Cornell published their paper in April of this year, the yellowish tinge had moved to the edges:

Field marks noted by G. Sparling were the bird's unusually large size compared to pileated woodpecker, peculiarly pointed red crest with black anterior edge, long neck, and extensive white on lower half of folded wings showing slight yellowish tinge along edges "like parchment paper."

In "The Grail Bird", the "yellowish off white" had become "brilliant white", but the bird now has "greenish staining on the lower part of its back". The bird now has "two white lines extending up the back to its crested head":

When he saw the bird's unique color pattern--brilliant white on the lower half of its back, with two white lines extending up the back to its crested head--he knew immediately that he had never seen this kind of bird before. Inconspicuous in his kayak, he pulled into a secluded spot and sat watching it for almost a full minute. The woodpecker was so close he could see the minute details of the feathers and even some greenish staining on the lower part of its back, perhaps from going in and out of a roost hole or nest.

In North American Birds, Dec 04-Feb '05, page 198, the bird's bill becomes "light-colored", but the white lines extending up the back are again missing:

The bird landed on a tree about 20m in front of his kayak. Though he lacked binoculars, he noticed that it looked different from a Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileated) and posted a description of the bird--which was observed perched on the side of a tree--to a website for canoe and kayak enthusiasts. His description included unusually large size, extensive white on the folded wing (with an "odd yellowish " color to the white at its edges), a light-colored bill, and a crest showing some red. He described the movements as jerky and animated, with a cartoonish quality.

Finally, in a Sept 2005 Natural History article, Harrison writes that Sparling told him in February 2004 that his bird had "a big white bill".

I think this Arkansas Times article, published 5/5/2005, is notable because it refers to Gene Sparling of Hot Springs as a "non-birder".

There are some very interesting parallels between Sparling's bird and an aberrant Pileated seen by Noel Snyder in 1979. Like Sparling, Snyder saw a large woodpecker that appeared to show a lot of white on its folded wing. Snyder then used his binoculars and found that on his bird the white triangles on the bird's wings were in fact cream in color, not pure white.

Overall, I think it's quite disturbing that there are so many versions of Sparling's story. Sparling's original version appears to describe an abnormal Pileated, and Cornell admits subsequently finding abnormal Pileateds in the area. If Sparling really did see an abnormal Pileated, I think the chances are vanishingly small that subsequent searchers in the area glimpsed birds that actually were Ivory-bills.