I'VE NEVER BEEN AN AVID WATCHER of birds, but after my fruitless trip to Arkansas I began suffering from a spell of ivorybill mania myself. During idle moments driving or sitting at home in North Carolina, I caught myself scanning the sky and nearby trees. At the public library one afternoon, I saw a yellow-bellied sapsucker hammering a pine outside. I stood up and yelled, "Hey, a woodpecker!"

Midsummer, I got hold of Gene Sparling, and we planned a weeklong kayak trip in the autumn, when the leaves would be off the trees and the media swarm would have thinned—and when I might have a shot at getting a glimpse, maybe even a photograph, of the phantom bird. The morning of our trip, I breakfasted at Gene's Barbecue with Sparling. We were joined by Nancy DeLamar and Scott Simon, of the Nature Conservancy. Simon, the state director, talked about TNC's local land acquisitions, which he said had been going well. The organization had just closed on an additional 5,000 acres, and earlier in the week they'd penned a $10 million state, federal, and private commitment for new conservation easements. "But if we had more money, we'd do more," he said.

When the plates were cleared, Sparling and I headed to Bayou de View. Sparling had spent his summer on the public-relations circuit, wooing donors for TNC's habitat-expansion efforts and reciting the tale of his sighting for a relentless battery of media. "It's good to get away from all that confusion," he told me.

We drove past fields of cotton, which still had downy microcumuli clinging to their brittle branches, remnants of the autumn harvest. Where the farmland ended, the Big Woods rose in a gray-green mantle. Crossing the bridge over the bayou, Sparling slowed his truck, panning his gaze through the sky above the road. "As many times as I've been over this bridge," he said, "I do always keep my eyes peeled when I drive through." (In fact, a Fish and Wildlife employee had supposedly seen the bird there a few days earlier, though he hadn't spotted enough of the field marks—bill, plumage, etc.—for the sighting to constitute big news.)

Sparling parked on a gravel landing and we began hoisting the kayaks off the rack of his truck. A pair of search-team members emerged from the forest, carrying a canoe. One wore a Sherpa hat and a five-o'clock shadow. The other was dressed as a shrub, in a camo jacket bristling with little leaflike tatters.

"Seeing anything, gentlemen?" Sparling asked.

"Nope," said the man in the Sherpa hat. They'd been out there erecting tree blinds in which the searchers were assigned to perch for eight cold hours a day.

A Ford F-150 with Montana plates rattled down to the landing. A small fleet of kayaks was belted to the roof. A middle-aged man got out and ambled over to us. He had big aviator shades and an air of highway loneliness about him.

"What are you guys looking for?" he asked, noting my camera, which was outfitted with a zoom lens the size of a soup thermos.

"Take a wild guess," Sparling said. He and Sparling exchanged introductions, and the man raised his eyes and rocked back on his heels.

"The number-one spotter," the man said. "I thought it might be you."

Sparling shifted somewhat uncomfortably, and he asked the guy what he did for a living back in Montana.

"Which career? Which life?" the man said. "Now mostly I'm just a vagabond bum, looking to do kayaking and birdwatching full-time."

Sparling said, "A man after my own heart; it's a wonderful life."

We slid our boats into the bayou. Paddling away, Sparling cast a sympathetic glance back at the nomadic birder. "I feel bad for these guys who drive all the way across the country to try to see this bird," he said. "I'd like to tell 'em I spent a year out here and didn't see a damn thing. Could've saved him the trip."

Sparling glided out into the silty water, threading his way through the cypress maze. A few minutes in, I saw a bird, a flash of white vivid against the tree trunks. "Gene!" I said.

"Kingfisher," he said, without bothering to look. "To be honest," he added, "I have somewhat let go of the need to see the bird again myself. Seeing it's not nearly as important as restoring the habitat. If we give him a place to live, he can take care of himself. It doesn't matter whether we know where he is or not."

The fall had been dry in Arkansas, and the water in the swamp was low. The vandals of the forest, beavers, had dammed the channel every few hundred yards, and we had to vault strenuously over their blockades, breathing in the spicy stink of their musk.

The bayou broadened into an oblong black lake, and Sparling suddenly got quiet, watching a black confetti of crows tumbling above the tree line about 150 yards away. "Hold on," he said. "The bird was seen right here, getting mobbed by crows, and these guys are sure as hell chasing something." But the crows veered out of sight. Their cawing faded and the only sound in the swamp was the conch-shell moan of Interstate 40, which the woodpecker(s) had almost certainly crossed to be seen up this way. Sparling shook his head at the thought of it. "It's amazing: Here you've got what's probably the rarest bird in the world, regularly flying over I-40." He shrugged and paddled on. "Sure hope he's flying high."

Farther down, we pulled out into a shallow canyon of trees where the forest had been cleared to accommodate a long, stolid parade of telephone poles. The sun was throwing a platinum glow on the dark water, and the trees blurred and shimmered with reflected, dying light. Dusk was coming on, and whatever birds were out there would soon be heading home to roost. I shipped my paddle, my boat turning idly in the autumn wind like the needle on a compass. And then something caught my eye, a far-off flare of red, white, and black. I raised my camera, nearly dropping it in my haste, and focused on the flitting colors, which turned out to be a load of glossy new sedans on an 18-wheeler barreling east along the interstate.