Saturday, April 07, 2007

-- Mist Nets --

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This blog post from Chile shows a juvenile Magellanic Woodpecker caught in a mist net (usually used to catch smaller neotropical migrants for banding or other study). Mist net use has occasionally been brought up (not all that realistically) in the search for the Ivory-bill. An adult IBWO might well be able to break free of a mist net or become dangerously entangled trying, if you could even determine the best place to place one.
Somewhat interestingly, in handling the captured bird, this blogger mentions she was "somewhat afraid it was going to stab my eyeballs out with its huge, tree shattering bill." As an aside, this is in fact what happens toward the end of Greg Lewbart's old novel, Ivory Hunters, when one of the principal characters is killed by being stabbed through the eyeball by an Ivory-bill!
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