"Fifteen minutes later, I suggested that we sit down and write detailed field notes, before we'd had a chance to think much about what we had seen or to confer with each other.

"As he finished his notes, Harrison sat down on a log, put his face in his hands, and began to sob. 'I saw an ivory-bill,' he said. I stood quietly a few feet away, too choked with emotion to speak," Gallagher said.

Later, Harrison said, "I have always believed that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker still lived, and finding one has been a dominant force in my life for more than three decades. Finding an ivory-bill was a 33-year dream come true for me."

Seven Sightings of an Elusive Bird