Pure
Fiel a Verdad
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2001
- Posts
- 15,135
Some say there's too little good news on this forum. Too little that human beings of all political parties can come together on.
Well, it appears that the ivory billed woodpecker lives!
For a picture of this beautiful bird, the second largest pecker in the world, see
http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgu...blogspot.com/2005_10_01_tetricus_archive.html
The story (similar stories have appeared elsewhere).
Alive and pecking?
Ivory-billed woodpecker was believed extinct, but Canadian-U.S. team hopes to get photographic evidence it still lives
Sep. 26, 2006. 07:49 AM
PETER CALAMAI
SCIENCE WRITER
Toronto Star
Ivory-billed woodpeckers, believed extinct until recently, have been seen 14 separate times since May last year along a remote Florida panhandle river, a team of Canadian and U.S. bird researchers have announced.
One American researcher spotted two of the huge woodpeckers at the same time, strongly suggesting that a breeding population of Ivory-bills has managed to survive on the Choctawhatchee River even if wiped out elsewhere across North America and in Cuba.
Struggling on a shoestring budget and battling alligators and water moccasin snakes, the team also recorded hundreds of distinctive vocal calls and rapping used by the woodpeckers to communicate, found a score of recent tree-nesting cavities of the right size and identified dozens of the bird's unique chisel marks on bark.
"I think they're all up and down the river," said University of Windsor professor Dan Mennill, a 32-year-old biologist specializing in bird sounds and team co-leader.
Yet despite visiting the area regularly since last May and camping out there continuously for almost six months, the researchers from Windsor and from Auburn University in Alabama failed to photograph the magnificent bird.
The Ivory-billed woodpecker is not difficult for experienced birders to identify. Bigger than a crow, it is flamboyantly marked with a red crest, yellow eyes, a gleaming white bill and white feathers at the trailing edge of the wings.
"We need the kind of photograph that will convince people who are skeptical," said Mennill, who didn't see the bird himself during an eight-day visit to the area.
He explained that the team members paddling along the Choctawhatchee instinctively grabbed for binoculars rather than cameras when they spotted a likely bird.
The head of natural history at the Royal Ontario Museum, bird researcher Allan Baker, agreed that a photograph of the woodpecker is essential to remove all doubt.
Well, it appears that the ivory billed woodpecker lives!
For a picture of this beautiful bird, the second largest pecker in the world, see
http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgu...blogspot.com/2005_10_01_tetricus_archive.html
The story (similar stories have appeared elsewhere).
Alive and pecking?
Ivory-billed woodpecker was believed extinct, but Canadian-U.S. team hopes to get photographic evidence it still lives
Sep. 26, 2006. 07:49 AM
PETER CALAMAI
SCIENCE WRITER
Toronto Star
Ivory-billed woodpeckers, believed extinct until recently, have been seen 14 separate times since May last year along a remote Florida panhandle river, a team of Canadian and U.S. bird researchers have announced.
One American researcher spotted two of the huge woodpeckers at the same time, strongly suggesting that a breeding population of Ivory-bills has managed to survive on the Choctawhatchee River even if wiped out elsewhere across North America and in Cuba.
Struggling on a shoestring budget and battling alligators and water moccasin snakes, the team also recorded hundreds of distinctive vocal calls and rapping used by the woodpeckers to communicate, found a score of recent tree-nesting cavities of the right size and identified dozens of the bird's unique chisel marks on bark.
"I think they're all up and down the river," said University of Windsor professor Dan Mennill, a 32-year-old biologist specializing in bird sounds and team co-leader.
Yet despite visiting the area regularly since last May and camping out there continuously for almost six months, the researchers from Windsor and from Auburn University in Alabama failed to photograph the magnificent bird.
The Ivory-billed woodpecker is not difficult for experienced birders to identify. Bigger than a crow, it is flamboyantly marked with a red crest, yellow eyes, a gleaming white bill and white feathers at the trailing edge of the wings.
"We need the kind of photograph that will convince people who are skeptical," said Mennill, who didn't see the bird himself during an eight-day visit to the area.
He explained that the team members paddling along the Choctawhatchee instinctively grabbed for binoculars rather than cameras when they spotted a likely bird.
The head of natural history at the Royal Ontario Museum, bird researcher Allan Baker, agreed that a photograph of the woodpecker is essential to remove all doubt.
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