A sketch from 2004 of what was believed to be an ivory-billed woodpecker.
Posted on 07/21/2005 1:10:08 PM PDT by neverdem
Bird in question was thought to be extinct
Three biologists are questioning the evidence used by a team of bird experts who made the electrifying claim in April that they had sighted an ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird presumed to have vanished from the United States more than 60 years ago, in the swampy forests of southeastern Arkansas.
If the challenge holds up, it would not only undermine a scientific triumph -- the rediscovery of a resplendent bird that had been exhaustively sought for years -- but also significant new conservation expenditures in the region.
The paper questioning the discovery has been provisionally accepted by a peer-reviewed scientific journal, which could post the analysis on its Web site within a few weeks. But the paper will be accompanied by a fierce rebuttal by the research team that announced the bird's discovery defending its claim, and a response to that rebuttal by the challengers.
The expected publication of the paper and the rebuttal was confirmed in interviews and e-mail exchanges with two authors of the challenge, Richard Prum and Mark Robbins, ornithologists at Yale University and at the University of Kansas, as well as with two members of the team that reported finding the woodpecker.
The third author of the new paper is Jerome Jackson, a zoologist at Florida Gulf Coast University and the author of the book "In Search of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker," published in 2004.
The scientists on both sides of the issue declined to name the journal or to discuss the details of the challenge and the response until they are published.
But they made it clear that the debate revolves around four seconds of fuzzy videotape that, by chance, captured a bird with sweeping white-and-black wings as it darted from its perch on the far side of a tupelo tree in April 2004 and flicked over swampy waters before vanishing in the trees 11 wing beats later.
Everyone agrees that the bird that appears on the tape is either an ivory-billed or a pileated woodpecker. The team that conducted the original search for the bird ran extensive tests, including re-creating the scene captured in video using flapping, hand-held models of the two types of woodpecker. They concluded that the plumage patterns seen in the grainy image could only be that of the ivory-billed woodpecker.
The authors of the new paper disagree.
That video clip was just one piece in a pile of drawings, recordings and other evidence collected in more than a year of searching and deploying cameras and listening devices across the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge.
Only extended scientific discussion -- or new pictures of the bird from additional searches -- will determine whose view will prevail. Another intensive scientific search of the region is scheduled to begin in November, said officials at Cornell University, whose researchers were among those on the original research team.
"The people who originally announced this thoroughly believe they got an ivory-billed woodpecker," Robbins said in an interview.
"They believe one thing, we believe another. This is how science plays out, the fabric of science getting at the truth."
A sketch from 2004 of what was believed to be an ivory-billed woodpecker.
I remember this story.
Now it seems we have a suspicious pecker?
I am hopeful this discovery of the ivory billed woodpecker still stands!
Somebody better load up a shotgun, bag one of these suckers, and drop the carcass off at a wildlife office where it can be properly identified. That's the only way to prove they're not extinct.
In my experience (being raised on an Iowa farm) it is really not possible to know the number and species of birds present on a 260 acre farm. How in the world can anyone know the number and types of birds present in the whole world? Counting them won't work, because they fly around and may be counted multiple times or not at all.
Gonna be bad for ornithology tourism too...
We just drove through Arkansas on vacation and I laughed at one exit where we got off to get gas. An old motel had bought a banner to cover up it's old name. They had re-named their place(are you ready?)"The Ivory Billed Inn"... I presume to attract bird watchers.
LOL.
Thanks I needed that.
..We just drove through Arkansas on vacation and I laughed...at the paradise the Clintons created?
I really do love the woodpeckers, all of them, the little ones and the big ones too. Every winter, I put out seed and suet for them, for I would not want a single one of them to be hungry. They are just so beautiful. I do hope their story is true.
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The first link in comment# 14 may interest you.
Well, yeah - that too...
Ping
Speak for yourself! ;-P
Notice that this thread was reclassified to chat which is a great to kill a thread. I can't type quickly enough to chat.
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