Ivory Billed Woodpecker Story in the NYTimes --- long but interesting read

[Woolly Bugger]

If I wanted to, I could claim something that fewer than two dozen people on the planet right now can: I have seen an ivory-billed woodpecker. It was only a year ago that history was made when it was announced that this legendary woodpecker — also known as the Lord God Bird for the excited cry said to accompany a sighting — was not extinct, as had been widely believed, but had been positively identified in a swamp called the Bayou de View in Arkansas. On Feb. 26, I visited the bayou with Bill Tippit, a friendly bear of a birder. We were expecting to spend the day in the swamp with an expert guide, but in the chime of a cellphone, we found ourselves suddenly guideless, standing there with our waders, a canoe and a big desire. "I'm game," he said in his slow, deep twang. So we put in and spent the day drifting around the primeval beauty of Arkansas's most famous bottom-land swamp.

Read the eight page article.....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/magazine/07woodpecker.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

[flyman]

Chuck Norris brought the ivory bill back from extinction :)

[Busta Brown]

They just did a story in the NC Wildlife Magazine about the Ivory Bill that I get and it was very interesting. It is cool to hear a story like this.

Jeff ]

[Woolly Bugger]

http://www.sciencefriday.com/videos/watch/10414

This is the only known photographic documentation of the Imperial woodpecker, a 2-foot-tall relation of the Ivory-billed woodpecker. Found in a mountain range in Mexico, the Imperial is highly endangered, if not extinct. William Rhein, a dentist and amateur ornithologist who captured the bird on film in the 50s, wasn't pleased with the footage, and never publicly released the film. Tim Gallagher, editor-in-chief of Living Bird magazine, describes how the film was found and how it inspired Gallagher to pay a visit to the very same area a half century later. Footage was recorded by Dr. William L. Rhein Ronald Thorpe donated the film to the Macaulay Library, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

[Jfey]

Bob Fulton, aka RiverGeezer, wrote about his experience looking for The ivory billed woodpecker with a group from Cornell in his book; Swamp Drifter.  Pretty interesting stuff.

[ajhock]

Good Stuff.  I believe life wants to carry on, whether it knows it is extinct or not.  Even with these spotty images of a known animal, the questions of it's "existence" remain.  Phewrrrrrrr to the Mountain Lion/Bigfoot debate.  The article sounds a bit like the upstream/dry fly gentlemen arguing in their polite but vicious way with the downstream/nymph group.  I have a love of the history of wooden sailing yachts and their evolution- and the debate sounds the same as that.  Maybe it is the way "gentleman" egomaniacs argue.  This might be the most civil disagreement I have seen in a while.  At band camp, we painted a pilated woodpecker's bill white and sent it to a friend in Arkansas.         

[Transylwader]

Ornithologists, always watching birds...and trying to touch them...

perverts

[ajhock]

Tranny-You are a dirty bird.  Birders are more serious than fly guys,and birthers.    Although the those birds are worth a more careful study.