"GAME OVER"

More from Collinson here.

Update: Another related post from Collinson is here.

Congaree double-knock stories

1. Cornell's latest IBWO search season summary said:

Though the mobile search team had no definitive ivory-bill sightings, they did hear some strong double knocks in April in the Congaree of South Carolina.

2. From Cornell's Mobile Search Team travel log:

(April 6, Congaree, from Chris McCafferty):

Martjan heard a possible double-knock after completing a playback session, but heard nothing further, and thought it not particularly compelling in the absence of repeated sounds.

(April 10, Congaree, from Nathan Banfield)

...The double knock seemed like a near-perfect match for the sound made by the woodpecker genus that includes the ivory-bill, (there are no known recordings of an ivory-bill double knock), but I remain highly skeptical of it. If there was a repetition of at least two double knocks, or a reaction to my playback, then I would have stayed at the spot searching the area all day. It seems more likely a bird would make a series of knocks. What makes it somewhat interesting though, is that this sound was only a little over a kilometer from where Martjan heard a double knock on April 6.

3. From a Charlotte Observer article (dated 5/1/07):

Martjan Lammertink, the Dutch native leading the Cornell search team, has heard what he thinks was the ivory-billed's distinctive double-knock deep in the Congaree.

"I spent two winters in Arkansas searching and this was the strongest double-knock I've heard," he said. "It wasn't spectacularly overwhelming or close. It had the right spacing, but the tone was a little light."

Lammertink said he had broadcast a playback of double-knocks and said the one he heard could have been in response to the tape. "But I didn't hear anything else," he said. "If I had heard it again, then my heart would have started pounding."

From the St. Petersburg Times

An excerpt from this article:

Visitors can examine the legacy of the tribe through rare artifacts. One of the most precious is a 1, 000-year-old hand-carved wooden panel with a painting of the ivory-billed woodpecker, now believed to be extinct.

"a relief to the birding community"

An excerpt from this article, dated 6/21/07:

An Auburn University research team says it has evidence that ivory-billed woodpeckers are living in the Florida panhandle. The team has made 14 sightings of the presumed extinct bird since May, 2005. Recordings of the woodpecker's distinctive double-knock sound and other evidence consistent with the large bird's behavior are documented in a report published in Avian Conservation & Ecology.

Reports of the Florida sightings were a relief to the birding community, which has been involved in controversy since a 2004 sighting in Arkansas.

60+ years of "broken promises"

Here.

"IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER SIGHTED IN SINGER TRACT"

Video here.

A related page from the DiscoveryEditions site is here.

An excerpt:

In 1831, Audubon wrote, "Its notes are clear, loud and yet rather plaintive. They are heard at a considerable distance, perhaps half a mile, and resemble the false high note of a clarionet ...

One who disbelieves

An excerpt from a Rick Wright piece in the May/June '07 ABA Publication Winging It:

...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.

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.

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.

Another change at "Feathered Ghosts"?

At the moment, it appears that readers can't view or submit comments at Feathered Ghosts.

Centre for Fortean Zoology video

Check this out:



Note the ten-second segment starting at the 1:09 (remaining) mark.

"another bad rap for the ivory-billed woodpecker searchers"

Here.

Note this sentence:

The lead author, Clark Jones of Tall Timbers Research Station in Tallahassee, worked on the Cornell search team for five months.

Dreaming Back the IBWO

Video here.

Where's the Cornell rebuttal to Collinson's paper?

In March 2007, Cornell said:

Scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology remain firmly convinced that the bird in the Luneau video is indeed an ivory-bill. They will be publishing a rebuttal showing why they believe Collinson’s interpretation is flawed.

Collinson provides some related information here:

...Deal was... my understanding is that the Fitzpatrick et al team were invited to publish a reply alongside my paper at the time of publication, but the ms was not received in time, or at all. BMC Biology Editor has told me that if the rebuttal arrives, I will get chance to reply. So I expect to hear if something is in the pipeline, and I haven't heard anything yet. Of course maybe the rebuttal has arrived and is undergoing peer review before I see it. That is possible. I hope they go for BMC Biol, rather than somewhere easier like the end-of-term report...