(NYT) (extinct) Ivory-Billed Woodpecker ID is Disputed

[TaleWgnDg]

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Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Identification Is Disputed

by JAMES GORMAN, New York Times, Published March 16, 2006

David A. Sibley, one of the country's top bird experts, said today that the woodpecker that appears fleetingly in a blurry videotape taken in an Arkansas swamp, in a discovery that electrified the world of birding last year, was not an ivory-billed woodpecker after all.



photo: Associated Press
An artist rendering of the ivory-billed woodpecker,
as provided by the journal Science in 2005.

Instead, Mr. Sibley and three colleagues write in the journal Science, the bird is a common pileated woodpecker, and there is no conclusive evidence that the near-mythical ivory bill has escaped extinction.

The (blurry video-)tape was made on April 25, 2004, by M. David Luneau Jr., an electronics and computers professor at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Along with eyewitness sightings, it was the centerpiece of a spring 2005 paper in the same journal that sparked great public excitement, a commitment of $10 million in federal funds for ivory-bill conservation, and jubilation among conservationists and birders.

The majestic ivory bill, the largest woodpecker in the United States, had been a poignant example of extinction from the last confirmed American sighting in 1944 until the report of the rediscovery, when it quickly became a symbol of hope, embraced by birders and the public.

. . . more at . . . http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/science/16cnd-bird.html
(NYT may require freebie registration . . . go to bugmenot.com to get username, password)

(bold-faced type emphasis added by TaleWgnDg)

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[Benhurst]

1. Sad, if true. NT

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. The pileated woodpecker is big

and if there was nothing to compare it to, I could see where it might be thought as being the ivory-billed. The thing that gets me, though, is that the call of the ivory billed is said to be distinctive, and they have audio tapes from that area that have the call. They've aired them on AETN, the statewide educational network here in Arkansas.

[Withywindle]

5. They're the most similar species

and they do overlap in range. That's why that must have been the possibility they worked the hardest to eliminate first, wouldn't you think? I would think they would've wanted to be pretty dang sure it wasn't the more common Pileated.

[EST]

3. In a recent Scientific American,

as a follow up to the much older videotape story, a crew of learned enthusiasts confirmed the discovery. I haven't read the NYT story, must depend on the snip, but, unless they've included the followup, their story is incomplete and misleading.

[Ediacara]

4. This dispute has been going on for the entire time since the discovery

The authors know what pileated woodpeckers look like, and excluded them as a possibility in their findings. It will be interesting to see why Sibley et al think that they are incorrect.

[quaoar]

6. The NY Times fails to mention

that the expert they are relying on -- David Sibley -- also happens to write a weekly feature on birds that is syndicated by the New York Times.

[Hardrada]

7. I want to believe the IBW's are still around

somewhere. And Passenger Pigeons too.