Hey!

I'm Atlas Caproni, I'm sixteen, and I am a wildlife filmmaker. For the last few years, my brother and I have traveled around the state of Florida filming wildlife for our internet show, Teen Wilderness. We've been very successful, and have even been featured on Nickelodeon for our efforts.

During the Nickelodeon interview, we announced our goal to film all Florida's endangered species.  To date, we have filmed Manatees (underwater), Saltwater Crocodiles, a Natures Conservancy release of  Red Cockaded Woodpeckers, and Wood Storks.  Our next filming adventure will focus on filming the elusive Ivory Billed Woodpecker (IBW) and for this we need your help!

IBW's are CRAZY birds, standing at around two feet tall and with a wingspan a foot longer than that. Think pileated woodpecker, but much bigger.  They are the second largest woodpecker in North America, third in the whole world, and when they are knocking on a tree in search of prey, it sounds as though an axe is striking the wood.  With their rediscovery in 2004, they have become one of the world's most publicized
bird species. They are also among its rarest.

Only occurring in mature swamp forests, they were thought to be extinct until recently, when evidence of several small populations was uncovered by researchers. One of the most promising (though less famous) of these populations is found in the Choctowhatchee Swamp in Florida, a few hours away from my home. My goal is to get clear footage of an IBW and prove, once and for all, that they still exist. They are most active over the course of about four hours in the morning, and in the hours leading to dusk. I am planning to go with a team of three other teenagers to spend two weeks exploring these flooded woods in search of this bird, using HD video cameras mounted to our kayaks. Because we are likely to only have a window of a few seconds to film the IBW when we see it, we will film continuously while we search.

Here is where we need your help.  To have a reasonable chance at a shot of this bird, we need to pack in two weeks worth of batteries and memory cards, or the equivalent in a small generator and portable memory storage device. Anything yall can do is fine, we need all the help we can get! : )
 

Here's exactly what we need:

3 HD Waterproof  Digital Camcorders (We've used Sanyo VPC WH1's in the past)

1,344 GB worth of SD cards (32 GB/Camera/Day) OR equivalent portable storage device

168 Camcorder Batteries (1 Battery/ 2 Hrs filming/Camera) OR Portable Generator capable of recharging the batteries

Thanks for reading through all this, and I hope you'll consider helping us.