The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Video

[Mike Clifford]

It isn't smallmouth related, but it does serve to educate as to the importance of habitat preservation and maintaining a sustainable environment.

A video presentation of Tim Gallagher very similar to the one I saw at last years Prairie Rivers dinner follows.

 

Video footage (at 1/2 speed and 4x magnification) of an ivory-billed woodpecker taken by M. David Luneau Jr. in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, Arkansas, on 25 April 2004, as the bird fled from his approaching canoe.

 

The footage:

View

 

 

The Tim Gallagher Presentation

 

View Presentation

 

There is much debate as to whether this bird was mistaken for a Pileated Woodpecker, which is very similar.

Any thoughts after seeing the 2 videos?

[Tim Smith]

I grew up in Louisiana, Mike and the ivory-billed woodpecker was something people were generally aware of and thinking about. I remember from an early age looking for those streaks of white up the neck of the pileated woodpeckers I would see. None of that makes me any kind of expert in any of this, but I do tend to think the bird in the photo is an ivorybill woodpecker. Not only do they have the footage, they also have recordings of the call.

 

One thing that is especially interesting about this sighting to me is that the land where it was seen is or was a private hunting reserve. That's a form of conservation that isn't on most people's radar, but in some places in the world, that's some of the only kind of natural lands still around.

[jude]

Thanks for the link. It's the first time I've seen the video. Very cool. It sure was exciting news when it came out last year, and I haven't really been following the continued search. I hope it pans out, but when David Sibley calls it into question, it kind of makes me wonder.

 

Maybe my mind doesn't grasp the scope of the area they're searching, but it seems with the money, technology and manpower thrown at the search in the last year, something would have turned up.

[Tim Smith]

Maybe my mind doesn't grasp the scope of the area they're searching, but it seems with the money, technology and manpower thrown at the search in the last year, something would have turned up.

 

Time will sort this all out, but I don't take much from one search coming up empty. Animals are really, realy good at making themselves scarce. Birds are so small and mobile they fall into that category. It's not very easy to get around in a swamp...

 

...if Bin Laden can evade the US military for 5 years, I suspect an ivory billed woodpecker would have no problem getting away from a few biologists.