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Re: OT: Latest in Ivory Billed debate

From:

"George M. Jett"

Reply-To:

George M. Jett

Date:

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 09:49:07 -0400

Folks

Birding Magazine devotes most of the recent issue (Birding: Volume 39, 
Number 2: March/April 2007) to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.  There are six 
articles included covering many aspects of this species.  Another good 
reason to be an ABA (American Birding Association) member.  Check it out.

George

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Philip Webre" <>
To: <>
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2007 9:27 AM
Subject: [MDOSPREY] OT: Latest in Ivory Billed debate


Ivory-Billed Imposter?
By Erik Stokstad
ScienceNOW Daily News
15 March 2007
New evidence casts more doubt on the claim that a bird long thought extinct 
is still alive and flapping. In 2005, the birding world was riveted by a 
report that the majestic ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) 
had been definitively spotted in Arkansas (ScienceNOW, 28 April 2005). Since 
then, some scientists have voiced doubts about the strength of the evidence. 
Now a video suggests that the re-discoverers may have mistaken a large, 
common woodpecker for the ivory-billed.

The original report of the ivory-billed woodpecker (Science, 3 June 2005, p. 
1460) was based on three lines of evidence. First, a grainy, 4-second video 
filmed by electrical engineer David Luneau of the University of Arkansas in 
Little Rock showed a bird resembling an ivory-billed woodpecker as it flew 
from a tree in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Arkansas. 
Second, several experienced volunteers reported sightings of a similar bird. 
And finally, acoustical recorders placed in the area by the research team, 
led by John Fitzpatrick of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New 
York, caught cries and knocking noises like those made by ivory-billed 
woodpeckers.

Skeptics were not convinced by the video. In a technical comment last year, 
David Sibley of Concord, Massachusetts, and three scientists argued that the 
depicted bird could have been a pileated woodpecker (Science, 17 March 2006, 
p. 1555). Sibley, an author of bird identification books, noted that the 
trailing edge of the bird's wings was black, as in a pileated woodpecker. If 
the bird were an ivory-billed woodpecker, this edge should have been white. 
The Cornell team countered that the black coloring was in fact part of the 
background, and that video does show white wings with white trailing edges. 
What's more, Fitzpatrick pointed out that the bird in the Luneau video beat 
its wings 8.6 times a second, faster than is known for pileated woodpeckers.

Now, there's new video evidence. Taken by amateur birder David Nolin, the 
grainy films capture pileated woodpeckers flying away from the camera, much 
like in the ivory-billed video. When J. Martin Collinson, a human geneticist 
and avid birder at Aberdeen University in the United Kingdom, analyzed the 
videos, he found that some frames showed wings with no black trailing edge 
(see photo). "The pileated woodpecker can produce wing patterns that look 
more like what you'd expect from an ivory-billed," he concludes. "I'm quite 
convinced that the bird in the Luneau video is a pileated woodpecker." In 
addition, one of the pileateds beats its wings as fast the bird in the 
Luneau video, Collinson reports today in BMC Biology.

Sibley says the new paper backs his argument: "He's documenting for the fist 
time how ivory-billed-like a pileated can be." But Fitzpatrick disagrees. He 
points out that the pileated woodpecker in Nolin's video quickly slows its 
wingbeats, as pileated woodpeckers are known to do. The bird in the Luneau 
video, in contrast, continues to fly rapidly for all 4 seconds. As for the 
plumage, he says that the Nolin video was not properly processed for 
frame-by-frame analysis. "The result is a blur and confusing to decide where 
the black and white are," he says.

Who's right? That's a hard call to make--and probably will remain so without 
clearer evidence to analyze. "A good photo or video would end this debate 
tomorrow," Collinson says.