Sunday, March 05, 2006

TheLedger.com article

From this TheLedger.com article:
[Volunteer searcher Marian] Lichtler said she did film a pileated woodpecker, which is a large woodpecker that looks similar to the ivory-billed variety.

She said Cornell researchers are interested in any images of those woodpeckers, too.

Because of the terms of her volunteer tenure, Lichtler said she couldn't expand on that point.

Connie Bruce, a Cornell spokeswoman, said the policy is intended to make sure the information published about the search is accurate.

During the initial search in 2004-2005 that led to the announcement, volunteers were sworn to secrecy that there was even a search for the ivory-billed woodpecker under way.

However, one of key issues skeptics have cited is the possibility that the ivory-billed report could be a pileated woodpecker with aberrant plumage.

Jerome Jackson, a professor at Florida Gulf Coast University and a leading expert on ivory-billed woodpeckers, raised that possibility in a piece in the latest issue of The Auk, a journal published by the American Ornithologists Union.

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