What was your best experience in the field covering this story?
I've been a huge fan of this bird ever since I was a little kid, so there were two best moments. One was when I found out that I would be the photographer assigned to this story. The other was going to the place where there have been recent possible sightings, the Big Woods area of eastern Arkansas. It's a beautiful wild place. And to think that the ivory-billed woodpecker might be there! It's really hard to put into words.
What was your worst experience in the field covering this story?
Everybody is looking for a bird that they're probably never going to see. If it's there, it seems to be so elusive and so rare that when we talked about doing the story, my editors and I knew that the odds of seeing one—let alone getting a picture—were next to nonexistent. The hope has been that the searchers would eventually see a roost-hole, which might then lead to a bird. Even though the assignment is over, I'm not giving up hope.
What was your quirkiest experience in the field covering this story?
It was strange to line up 61 ivory-billed woodpecker specimens for a photo shoot at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. Since it's unlikely that I'll see even a single live bird in the wild, seeing those beautiful specimens was really an honor. It was a kick to call a museum and say, "Can we get all the ivory-billed woodpeckers you've got, and line them up for a studio shoot?"