<P> Usually two to five eggs are laid and incubated for 3 to 5 weeks . Parents incubate the eggs co-operatively, with the male incubating from about 4: 30 pm to 6: 30 am, while the female foraged, and vice versa from 6: 30 am to 4: 30 pm . They feed the chicks for months . Young learn to fly about 7 to 8 weeks after hatching . The parents continue feeding them for another two months . The family eventually splits up in late fall or early winter . </P> <P> Ornithologists speculate that they may live as long as 30 years . </P> <P> Heavy logging activity exacerbated by hunting by collectors devastated the population of ivory - billed woodpeckers in the late 19th century . It was generally considered extinct in the 1920s when a pair turned up in Florida, only to be shot for specimens . </P> <P> In 1932, a Louisiana state representative, Mason Spencer of Tallulah, disproved premature reports of the demise of the species when, armed with a gun and a hunting permit, he killed an ivory - billed woodpecker along the Tensas River and took the specimen to his state wildlife office in Baton Rouge . </P>

The probable extinction of the ivory-billed woodpecker was mainly driven by