Today's links

1. From a New York Times crossword puzzle buff here:

Ooo...! 'n hey agin! Look at 30D (Like an ivory-billed woodpecker), RARE -- “Extinct” is not “rare” and the “Lord God” bird (Compephilus principalis) has not been proven to be “rare” (as in “hen’s teeth”, well maybe!) but more likely “extinct” (as in “T-Rex”); however, as the article states “Who knows? I personally can't tell a parakeet from a vulture.”

2. More discussion of plumage abnormalities is on a Birdforum thread here.

A Tim Allwood post on the "wariness" hypothesis is here.

3. A Flickr photo group called "Campephilus Woodpeckers" is here.

"what if this is somehow true????"

Here.

"increasingly shaky"

Some of you may not have seen this paragraph from Science (12/22/06):

Bird to watch for. We hoped new sightings would prove that the ivory-billed woodpecker is alive and pecking. But indirect evidence from trees in Florida failed to sway the skeptics, and the original Arkansas sightings of the bird are looking increasingly shaky. Maybe it drowned in a rogue gravitational wave.

CREDIT: TERRY SMITH

Common sense

Check out some of these posts from Arkansas Hunting.net (login may be required):

From a 5/19/05 "John Stiles" post:

...so far there is absolutely zero, nada, zilch-point-none, proof, definitively, that the I-bill exists. There's more proof of Bigfoot than the I-bill woodpecker! There is proof however, that if you've got a UFO sighting or Bigfoot sighting and now an Ivory beaked peckerwood, then you got cash flow!

From another "John Stiles" post from 5/20/05:

I been thinkin about how "stupid" people think we Arkansans are...to fall for such a crock!...

From a "pointman" post on 6/23/05:

...I emailed the Cornell bird lab to ask for a picture of the woodpecker and here's the response...

Got any real clear pictures of the bird found in Cache River or not?
----
Anne Hobbs
Public Information Specialist
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
http://www.birds.cornell.edu

Nope. The best we've got are ones from the four seconds of video footage and they're pretty blurry. We're hoping to get clearer ones at some point.

From a prescient post by "4hunting" on 12/1/05:

Remember Pearl River!!!!!!!!!!...My belief is that one will see this deal die down here in Arkansas after this winter & most likely one of the other 6 locations will start getting the lime light & the hoop-ha will start all over again....

More tapping!

An excerpt from Geoff Hill's latest update:

These recent sound detections have re-energized the troops. We’re still optimistic that we’ll get some definitive evidence for the existence of ivorybills before this year’s search ends.

Today's links

1. Geoff Hill will speak (and sign copies of his book!) next week. Some excerpts from this link:

Auburn University Professor Geoff Hill and colleagues literally stumbled across evidence that a breeding colony of ivory-billed woodpeckers in a Florida swamp...The author of "Ivorybill Hunters: The Search for Proof in a Flooded Wilderness" will also focus on scientists need to remain objective, even in the midst of an overwhelming desire to record a discovery.

2. According to this column, the Brinkley IBWO billboard may still be up:

At Brinkley the top half of a double billboard bent forward by wind advertises the town's claim as the home of the thought-to-be-extinct Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. The bottom half of the sign advertises vasectomy reversal.

More IBWO reports

Available here.

"a bird of imagination"

A Discovery News video is here.