...My Guatemalan eye-opener was a Pale-billed Woodpecker, blithely destroying a tree at Tikal, oblivious to the curious and the admiring gathered below. For birders from the north, seeing this species or its congeners in the tropics is always bittersweet. For the Pale-billed Woodpecker, which ranges north to southernmost Sonora, is a member of the genus Campephilus, like the two great extinct woodpeckers of North America: the Ivory-billed and the Imperial.Note that back in March, I linked to this related blog post by Wright, which includes a photo of a Pale-billed Woodpecker from his February '07 trip to Central America.
Just three human generations ago, I might have sat under a tree in the American southeast or the Mexican northwest watching a different Campephilus strike fear into the hearts of bark grubs. But we gave our woodpeckers up, the price we were willing to pay for furniture veneers and ammunition boxes.
Monday
3 hours ago
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2 comments:
LOL!
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=12339127&postID=228542894897760083
Amy- you are a mean bitter person- I don’t agree w/ him posting before we were supposedt to but you were not there- several of us have seen it and we are not liars and have a great imagination- anyone w/ any birding skills can tell the difference-maybe you ought to put your money where your mouth is and get down there and spend some time in the swamps!! Closed mindedness is not very scientific- it’s pure stubborness. That area is so vast and the bird so rare- you can go all day and not even see a pileated- so- you don’t in fact know everything.
"you ought to put your money where your mouth is"
Amy has done so, but most TBs are too chicken to accept her bets. Did pd ever pay up?
"so- you don’t in fact know everything"
You don't have to know very much to know that the IBWO rediscovery was bogus. It just takes some critical thinking and common sense.
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