Collinson reviews Hill's book

Here.

More from the "South Carolina Ivory-billed Woodpecker Working Group"

Here.

Update: A reader points out some (old) related text here:

To further aid in the search for the IBWO, the SC IBWO Working Group created a dedicated Ivory-bill Woodpecker Coordinator position, funded through grants obtained by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Forest Service totaling $58,000, in addition to funding from The Nature Conservancy. Matthew Moskwik joins the South Carolina chapter with an impressive field research background and has worked in Costa Rica, Sierra Leone and throughout the United States. He will organize search efforts this winter among volunteers and partner agencies.

More links

1. From The Birdchaser here.

2. From A Transitional Fossil here.

3. From Cryptomundo here.

More about Hill

Here.

An excerpt:

Securing a small grant, Hill and several of his colleagues traveled to the Florida Panhandle in January 2007. Once there, the small group set up a number of listening stations and remote cameras that recorded the distinctive double-knocking sound and Kent calls the Ivory-billed Woodpecker makes.

During their time in Florida, Hill and his colleagues were able to record both photo and video of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers.

Hill is still working on gathering even more current photo evidence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

"We just haven’t gotten a really good break yet in getting photos of this bird, but it does exist," Hill said. "I believe this is the sunrise on a new age of Ivory-bills, and once they’re proven to exist, we can go about preserving the habitat they live in."

“high quality sightings”

Here.

IBWO tour solicitation

You might enjoy reading this old (August 2005) post.

Two more searchers to speak

1. Wayne Meyer will speak in Texas on September 8. Details here.

Here's part of Meyer's response to that recent Birding photo quiz:

Obviously, given the location, the hope is that these birds are Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. I was involved in the Arkansas search in February 2007 and heard a double-rap, so I don’t doubt the existence of this species. However, this photograph seems to me to be of three European Starlings. The elongated body and stiff, pointy wings are good for Ivory-billed Woodpecker, but there is no reference for size here...

2. John Ruthven is scheduled to speak on September 11 in Ohio:

National Medal of Arts recipient John A. Ruthven shares his journey in recording the elusive ivory billed woodpecker.

"Sooner or later, we’re going to have to let go"

Some excerpts from an ArkansasOnline article (subscription required), dated 9/3/07:

...More than three years after Hot Springs kayaker Gene Sparling spotted what he was sure was an ivory-billed woodpecker flying over the Cache River, the search continues for proof that the bird didn’t disappear along with much of the South’s bottomland hardwoods.
...
One of [Luneau's] cameras, mounted to a milk crate in a canoe, captured the grainy video that became the main basis for the argument that the bird was alive. Critics claim that the bird on film was a pileated woodpecker or a plant.

Luneau continues to hold out hope.

“I continue to be surprised at how difficult this bird is to find,” he said.
...
Researchers say skeptics don’t understand eastern Arkansas’ terrain.

“It’s a flying needle in a haystack,” Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Ron Rohrbaugh said of finding the bird. Rohrbaugh is the director of the lab’s ivory-billed woodpecker research project.

Dan Scheiman, bird conservation director for Audubon Arkansas, said ivory-billed woodpeckers “are a really shy bird.”

“They avoid people,” he said. “The Big Woods, they’re big. You don’t have a lot of visibility. Visibility is 50 yards at best.”

Even believers say they may never see the ivory-billed again.Others question whether the bird that searchers have dubbed “Elvis” might be as impossible to encounter as its namesake.

“You can’t prove something doesn’t exist,” said Jerome Jackson, a professor of biology at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, who has been critical of the evidence to date.

“There are lots of parallels to this search for the ivory-billed, beginning with the Loch Ness monster and others. Sooner or later, we’re going to have to let go,” said Jackson, who penned In Search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and whose research can be found throughout the recovery plan.
...
The plan recommends spending nearly $28 million - a mix ofprivate and public money - between 2006 and 2010. That’s in addition to the nearly $11 million spent so far on recovery and conservation after the 2005 announcement, service spokesman Jeff Fleming said...
...
The searchers will continue to use global positioning systems and aerial photography to find the most suitable habitat for the woodpecker, Rohrbaugh said. Helicopters may fly over the forest canopy to try to flush the bird out.

The lab will once again have a four-person mobile unit chase down promising leads in other states. The primary focus though will be on the White River.

Four field biologists will spend much of the winter camping in a remote section in the north area of the White Riverrefuge that researchers have “really yet to penetrate.”
...
Acknowledging a growing skepticism in the broader scientific community, [Allan Mueller, avian conservation project manager for The Nature Conservancy] said the believers and nonbelievers are at an ideological impasse.

“There’s no talk about stopping the search,” Mueller said. “Obviously everybody’s morale would be great if we got that glossy 8-by-10, which we don’t [have].”
...
Jackson points out that no highly trained ornithologists have seen the bird. With every news report, Jackson said, he’s inundated with calls about the bird, and he chalks the multiple sightings up to people seeing “what they want to see.”
...
Just how much longer researchers will scour the Big Woods is up in the air.

Scheiman thinks the search should last for two more years, but he notes that, “Support is definitely going to dim the longer we go without finding anything.”

Update: A reader writes:

It would be amusing to run under the helicopter
dressed in a Bigfoot costume...

Causes of the IBWO decline: monograph (available soon)

Details here.

Eskimo Curlew?

Here.

Update: More Eskimo Curlew links are here and here.