RE: non-extinct woodpecker

[Allan Edels <edels@msn.com>]

HERE IS CNN.com's version of the report (from Reuters) on 
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/28/woodpecker.found.reut/index.html 
.

Especially note the paragraph that reads:

"Visual encounters during 2004 and 2005, and analysis of a video clip from 
April 2004, confirm the existence of at least one male."

The report on CNN shows a photo pointing it out.

Allan Edels
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TEXT FOLLOWS:

Experts: Woodpecker feared extinct found
Ivory-billed woodpecker last confirmed 60 years ago
Thursday, April 28, 2005 Posted: 10:36 AM EDT (1436 GMT)


The ivory-billed woodpecker long suspected to be extinct, has been 
rediscovered in eastern Arkansas.


WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The ivory-billed woodpecker, long feared extinct, 
has been rediscovered in a remote part of Arkansas some 60 years after the 
last confirmed U.S. sighting, bird experts said Thursday.

Several people have seen and heard an ivory-billed woodpecker in a protected 
forest in eastern Arkansas near the last reliable sighting of the bird in 
1944, and one was captured on video last year.

"The ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), long suspected to be 
extinct, has been rediscovered in the 'Big Woods' region of eastern 
Arkansas," researchers wrote in the journal Science in an article hastily 
prepared for release.

"Visual encounters during 2004 and 2005, and analysis of a video clip from 
April 2004, confirm the existence of at least one male."

Drumming sounds made by the birds have also been heard, the researchers 
said.

"This is huge. Just huge," said Frank Gill, senior ornithologist at the 
Audubon Society. "It is kind of like finding Elvis."

Gill said there is little doubt the sightings are genuine. The experts were 
expected to display some of the evidence at a news conference at the 
Department of the Interior later Thursday.

"The ivory-billed woodpecker is one of six North American bird species 
suspected or known to have gone extinct since 1880," wrote the researchers, 
led by John Fitzpatrick of the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology 
in New York.

"The others are Labrador duck (Camptorhynchus labradorius), Eskimo curlew 
(Numenius borealis), Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), passenger 
pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius), and Bachman's warbler (Vermivora 
bachmanii)."

Big but shy

A large, dramatic-looking bird, the ivory-billed woodpecker was known to be 
shy and to prefer the deep woods of the U.S. Southeast.

"Its disappearance coincided with systematic annihilation of virgin tall 
forests across southeastern United States between 1880 and the 1940s," the 
researchers wrote.

People claimed to have seen it but the bird closely resembles the pileated 
woodpecker, which is noisy, less shy and quite common.

More reliable sightings were reported in Cuba as late as the 1980s.

"There have been lots and lots of reports and many of them have been off but 
others have been possible," Gill said in a telephone interview. "But this 
time we got it."

Gill said the bird was seen just over the border from Louisiana where the 
last documented ivory-bill was seen in 1944. "As a woodpecker flies it's not 
far," he said.

The birds only live about 15 years so the sightings mean they must be 
breeding somewhere.

"There has got to be a pretty serious lineage," Gill said. "It's got to be 
more than a few."

People are likely to flock to the area to try to see the birds themselves 
but it will be difficult, Gill said.

"It is not something you just go down and see. Your odds are very low," Gill 
said. "It is remote, difficult country. This time of year it is getting very 
buggy and very snakey and there is a lot of foliage."

But the discovery may help get protection for a larger area of the Big 
Woods, the nonprofit Nature Conservancy said.

"This area was once the largest expanse of forested wetlands in the country, 
originally consisting of 21 million acres of bottomland hardwood forests. 
Today, only 4.9 million acres remain, mostly in scattered woodland patches," 
it says on its Internet Web site.

"It's just the most exciting report in my lifetime. I think we will move ... 
to make this a globally important bird wildlife area," Gill said.

==========================================================

> From: "James R. Cunningham" <jrccea@bellsouth.net>
> Reply-To: jrccea@bellsouth.net
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: non-extinct woodpecker
> Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 05:48:09 -0700
>
> This may be old news, but after 60 years of being thought extinct, the
> Ivory Billed Woodpecker has been located in the Big Woods of northeast
> Arkansas.  At least one male was spotted about two years ago, and their
> presence has since been confirmed by others.  Let's hope that they are
> not going to be overrun with birdwatchers (or poachers).
> Jim Cunningham