Another wooden Ivory-bill

An excerpt from this article:

The National Audubon Society asked Lekson to make a replica of the ivory-bill woodpecker, the third largest woodpecker in the world that was thought to be extinct since the 1930’s. Recently there has been sightings reported in Florida, Lekson said.

“It’s a huge bird,” with a 30-inch wingspan and 20 inches tall, he said.

The body and head of the woodpecker was “cut out of a seven-feet in diameter stump,” he said.

The society only gave Lekson a month to make the bird and he would be out of town for two weeks during that time. “It meant I only had 14 days. I worked 14 to 16 hours a day. Then Tropical Storm Tammy hit. I had a foot of water in the shop.”

He still managed to finish the woodpecker. Lekson and his wife were flown to New York for the Audubon Society celebration last November. Tom Brokaw presented Lekson’s Ivory-bill Woodpecker to the Society’s president, John Flicker. “It was an amazing honor.”