There is no better way to get most serious biologists to scoff than to say you believe there are still ivory-billed woodpeckers in the swampy forests of the Deep South. That is the very reason that I often sport my T-shirt from The Nature Conservancy that has a big drawing of the head of an ivory-billed woodpecker on the back with the word found above it. I always get a big reaction.

For some reason, optimism really gets on smart people’s nerves. I remember the time my friend, science writer David Quammen, told me, “There’s a thin line between hope and cluelessness.” So I saved twenty dollars and didn’t send him the shirt.

But the search for the ivory-bill, which had been officially declared extinct by darn near everybody, is serious work. Over the last half a dozen years, there have been sightings reported in “the Big Woods” of Arkansas and the Panhandle of Florida. Amateur birders, professional ornithologists, state and federal agencies, and even the world’s largest conservation group, The Nature Conservancy, are involved in the search. And the one concrete benefit to all the renewed interest is that big chunks of forested habitat are under new protections.

While the verdict is still out on whether the birds remain, don’t tell that to Geoff Hill. An ornithologist and professor of biology at Auburn University, Hill and his team of graduate students have been intensely studying the Choctawhatchee River Valley in the Florida Panhandle, searching for and collecting data on ivory-bills since 2005. Since their first visit that May, Geoff and his team have collected solid evidence that the birds are still around. On their first day in the swamp, Geoff himself heard the distinctive double-knock—the diagnostic display rap of an ivory-billed woodpecker. That same morning, research assistant Brian Rolek got a clear look at an adult bird, with its distinctive white feathers on both the upper and undersides of the trailing half of its wings.

However, it took longer for Hill to finally spot an ivory-bill. “I didn’t see one for nine months after Brian’s initial sighting,” he said, remembering that first spotting. When asked what it felt like when he saw the bird for the first time, Hill responded like the biologist he is, saying, “I’m a pretty stoic person, so there were no tears or anything. Frankly, I was relieved to know that the bird really is here in the Choctawhatchee River.”

Since that moment thousands of hours have been spent in the mature swampy forest by experienced birders and biologists, resulting in dozens of documented sound detections, hundreds of sound recordings, and more than two dozen sightings. In addition, ever since their first expedition to the area, Hill and his team have documented large cavity entrances in trees, as well as scaled, or chipped, bark from recently dead trees, both of which could be signs indicative of ivory-bills.

The studies have been largely seasonal, January through March, when it is easiest to travel by boat through the cypress swamp. Plus, as Hill said, “the mosquitoes can be brutal later in the year.” But recently the team has acquired high-quality remote cameras that they are setting in a number of spots in the study area. That way a grad student or technician can quickly get in to the swamp to change the memory cards and hopefully “capture” an ivory-bill by photograph. (Nothing is as definitive as getting good, clear, photographs or video of ivory-bills in the wild.)

This is important for many reasons, none more so than bringing greater protection of the bird’s habitat. As everywhere, open areas in the Panhandle are at risk. “This part of Florida is under eminent threat of development,” Hill told me. “You wouldn’t think the flooded wetland swamps would be in danger, but there is a plan to build a huge international airport and housing development nearby, and sure enough, this new community would require a hurricane evacuation highway. The preliminary plans for this highway that I’ve seen have it cutting right across the Choctawhatchee and the ivory-bill’s habitat.”

When asked what it will take to ensure the protection of the Choctawhatchee River cypress swamp from development, however, Hill answered at lightning speed: “One good photograph will keep any roads from being built through the swamp!”

You wouldn’t think that a bird that is as big as a raven with bright white wings and a red crest would be so very hard to see, but everything in this bird’s world helps it to hide. As to why he hasn’t gotten good shots yet, Hill admitted that it’s tough. “It is nothing new that ivory-bills are elusive creatures. Arthur Allen, who did the last field study of the species in the 1920s, was camped just two hundred yards from an ivory-bill nest and still it took him days to see a bird. So in the vast swamp forest along the Choctawhatchee River, it is going to take substantial luck to find one of their nests.”

To the naysayers, Hill has a seasoned response: “It’s easy and safe to be a skeptic. And frankly, the evidence of the critics is pretty weak. They simply start from the premise that ‘the birds can’t exist.’ We, on the other hand, are steadily building our research and making the case for the birds.”

But clearly, if any of the species has survived, they have done so by being secretive. And there remains hope that they are still there. “I do think there are a few birds here,” Hill told me, adding, “It’s a big swamp.”

Though when asked if he would sport one of those found T-shirts at the next national meeting of the American Ornithological Union, he said, “No. That would be unprofessional. You don’t win an argument like this by being a jerk and looking for an argument. We settle the debate when we get a clear photo of the bird.”

In the summer of 2008, Geoff posted a mixed message on his blog: The team was left with a large body of evidence that ivory-billed woodpeckers persist along the Choctawhatchee River in the Florida Panhandle, but were still unable to come up with a photo. “Either the excitement of the ivorybill hunt causes competent birders to see and hear things that do not exist and leads competent sound analysts to misidentify hundreds of recorded sounds,” he wrote, “or the few ivorybills in the Choctawhatchee River Basin are among the most elusive birds on the planet.”

Acknowledging the defeated tone of his blog entry, Geoff went on to say that he is still optimistic that photo proof will emerge. Engineers at National Geographic designed a “seismic sensor”—a camera trigger that is tripped by vibrations. “In other words,” Geoff wrote, “we now have a camera that will only be triggered by something banging on the trunk of a tree. With this new sensor, we should have almost no false activations. Every picture should be a woodpecker banging on the tree.”

And so, to this date, the search continues. Loyalists remain hopeful that next year will be the year when they finally capture a photo of this prized and elusive bird and the headlines read: found.