who will be the first DUer to see an ivory billed woodpecker?

[Gato Moteado]

any Arkansas DUers in this group?

[blindpig]

1. Dunno but

I'd suspect it could be Amazona, though she hasn't been around for a while. She's in the area(If Katrina didn't whack her)and was a Serious Birder.

[livetohike]

2. I wish it could be me!

:-)

[Reciprocity]

3. I live in deep East Texas and my woods are jam packed with woodpeckers.

How I would love to see the Ivory billed or Red-Cockaded woodpeckers.
BTW the Red-Cockaded has no red on it.

Red-cockaded Woodpecker
(Picoides borealis)
The pinelands of the southeastern U.S. are the year-round home to this unique and social woodpecker. Unfortunately, habitat loss and degradation have greatly reduced its range and negatively affected this species, which has been considered Federally Endangered since 1968. Because of this designation and its presence on many federal and private lands, a great deal of research has been conducted. This species is probably the most well-studied woodpecker in the world. Management has improved over the years however but many challenges lie ahead.

[semillama]

4. Actually, the Red-cockaded does have red on it

just it's usually impossible to see in the field!

[Reciprocity]

5. Thanks for the photo!

[XemaSab]

6. Last January I thought I had seen ALL the regular woodpeckers for ABA

including all forms and past and future splits.

Then came the rediscovery.

And lemme tell ya, the Piciformes are my specialty... :9

[TaleWgnDg]

7. I wonder if this bird actually exists?! Yes, the *finders* of

the ivory billed woodpecker are reputable birders; however, can they be duped? Uh-huh?

[semillama]

8. well, if they were duped

that means there was some joker hiding in the swamp, with a stereo set of speakers in the trees, and played a "Double-tap" IBWO knock and response for the team to record.

Impossible? no. Improbable? highly. especially since I think the recordings may have been made prior to the announcement (although I am unsure about that).

I know at least one person who says he has seen what he would be confident in calling an IBWO back in the 80s in the same location in Arkansas, but due to the climate of the last 30-40 years in scoffing at sightings, he never wrote it up or mentioned it. and this guy is one of the best birders I know.

[TaleWgnDg]

9. I hear you; however, I am still doubtful . . . and I await any new

finds. Here's Cornell on it: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/ivory/
.

[semillama]

10. here's some new analysis of the Luneau video

not the clincher, but I think they have a good case for funding further research and work. We're just about into breeding season, so keep your fingers crossed for good news in the next couple months...

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/ivory/rediscovery/support/

[semillama]

11. I held a pair in my hands on Saturday

Too bad they were museum specimens! I went to the OSU museum of biodiversity with the group of avid birders I am associated with.

I also examined specimens of Passenger Pigeons and Carolina Parakeets. Very sad, to look at these birds and understand how much less rich and colorful our nation is for having lost these birds.

Examining specimens is a great way to get very familar with plumage differences, and we looked at the differences between short and long-billed dowitchers, and the accipiters, to name a few.

Interesting note about Ivory-billed woodpeckers - not very much larger at all than pileateds. That white section of the secondaries is freaking obvious though!

[blindpig]

12. The twitchers say it just ain't so.

I just came across this web site:

www.worldtwitch.com/

This is a site for very serious birders, pretty neat but they're sure worked up about the Ivory-billed. Say the evidence is too thin, all sorts of possible mistakes are cited. And they may be right, though it would break my heart after the jubilation of last year. Or it might just be sour grapes because the bird has eluded members of their rarified caste. One thing they're right about, more documentation is needed. Hope to gods they're wrong.

[semillama]

13. Note that they are silent about Cornell's recent web update

The skepticism on that site is pretty raw and emotional. It sounds to me like they have as big a stake in "debunking" Cornell as they claim Cornell has in trumpeting supposedly weak evidence. Also seems to be some personal attacks on the people who are working on the project and making the sightings. It's easy to criticize field workers from your computer desk, I suppose. But it seems to me that the people who are making these sightings are well aware of the differences between IBWO and PIWO. Having held an example of each up to each other, I would have some confidence in people who are even more aware of the differences between the species.

But the Cornell scientists have made very good points about wing beat frequency and have been very careful in my opinion about what their evidence really means.

I'm still waiting for a good photo, too, mind you. But I'm not going to put on the blinders that either extreme insists on wearing.

[carpetbagger]

14. This is a decent article in Auk about evaluating IBW evidence.

http://www.aou.org/persp1231.pdf

It's mildly skeptical, well-written, and more of an analysis piece than an opinion piece, but does both.

I wouldn't be surprised if more attention paid to aberrant Pileated Woodpeckers, both on a birding level of identification of leucistic patterns as well as on a more quantitative level of identification of ranges of characteristics, leads to increased skepticism in a few years. The precedent exists in the discarding of hundreds of winter records of Semipalmated Sandpipers based on variation within other Calidris sandpipers.

Then again, I believe that IBW, as well as Imperial, and Eskimo Curlew as well, still exist in the wild.

[TaleWgnDg]

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

.

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)

.

[blindpig]

16. Heard that on NPR this morning.

Very discouraging. I can't fucking take it. Is nothing good happening in this world?

[Gato Moteado]

17. don't believe it

the ivory bills are there. they had been seeing and hearing them for a year or more before the story even came out.

[blindpig]

20. From your mouth to Atremis's ear.

Praise the Huntress!

[semillama]

18. There was a reply to sibley

Published in Science.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/311/5767/1555b?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Ivory-billed&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

Basically, It refutes Sibley's argument pretty well, and also points out that he and his co-authors did not dispute all the evidence, only selected bits of teh Lueau video. For example, they said nothing about the wing-beat frequency, which to me is the most convincing part. Frankly, ignoring that the bird in the video has a higher wingbeat frequency than ANY pileated ever recorded, but was alomst identical to the recording of an IBWO taking off from a branch made at the Singer Tract in the 30's, makes Sibley look pretty shabby as a scientist, and it makes me feel embarassed for him.

but like I said before, I'm still waiting for a photo.

[blindpig]

19. Wowsa, thanks.

Thanks for the encouraging word. Boy, this is turning into one of those classic pissing contests. Pictures, pictures, pictures!

I'm going camping in Francis Marion NF in May for a week of serious field work. I'll be visiting the site of one of the last sightings of the IBWP(uncomfirmed but pretty solid, 1937.) There's still a bit of old gallery forest in SC but one of the largest tracts is on the SRC(nuke bomb plant) thus verboten to us mere mortals. Congaree is very nice but a little too close to Columbia.

In any case, I intend to get my Bachman's Warbler! :crazy: Along with a Rainbow Snake, the only hole in my SC snake lifelist.(good luck!{knocking on wood})