DRYDEN — Searchers have found the wreckage of a helicopter and dead pilot missing since Thursday in the Southern Tier.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters says the helicopter was found about 10 a.m. Sunday. State Police said the pilot, Earl L. Small Jr., 57, of Powder Springs, Ga., had left the Norwich airport at 12:30 p.m. Thursday heading to Zanesville, Ohio.

Col. Herbert Lavin of the Civil Air Patrol, which helped search, said the Robinson R-22 helicopter was embedded in pine trees on a ridge in the Tompkins County town of Dryden, which is 40 miles south of Syracuse. Federal investigators are trying to determine why it crashed.