Sighting of Rare (Ivory-Billed) Woodpecker Questioned

[jpak]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/tech/2007/mar/15/031500347.html

LONDON (AP) - A Scottish scientist says American bird experts may have been wrong when they concluded that the ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct, might have survived.

In an article published Wednesday in the journal BMC Biology, University of Aberdeen geneticist Martin Collinson disputed whether a video shot by an Arkansas scientist showed the ivory-billed woodpecker.

Collinson, a passionate birder, analyzed the Arkansas video frame by frame and compared it with that of a pileated woodpecker, which is a related species with similar black-and-white plumage. His study suggested it was not possible to be certain that the bird in the video was the ivory-billed woodpecker.

"The bird in the Arkansas video is best regarded as not fully identified, and is probably a pileated woodpecker," Collinson wrote.

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[shireen]

1. they're ornithology's UFOs.

i viewed the video on-line at the Cornell ornithology lab website, albeit at low resolution, and wasn't convinced either.

Since the big announcement, there have been a string of IBW sightings. I think Bigfoot is feeling ignored ....
:P

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. It is also possible that it is of a sub-species that has survived

in Cuba, carried to the mainland by a hurricane.