February 11, 2004: At about 1:30 P.M., while kayaking through the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas, Gene Sparling of Hot Springs, Arkansas, watched as a huge and unusual woodpecker with a red crest flew toward him and landed on a nearby tree. The bird hitched around the tree in what he later described as a "herky jerky" or "cartoon-like" motion. Sparling noticed several field marks suggesting that the bird was an Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

About a week later, Tim Gallagher, editor of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's Living Bird magazine, and Bobby Harrison, associate professor at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, interviewed Sparling about his sighting after reading a post on a web site. Gallagher and Harrison had been following up on ivory-bill sightings in preparation for a book Gallagher was writing. Sparling's description was so convincing that Gallagher and Harrison traveled to Arkansas so that Sparling could take them back to the bayou where he had seen the bird.