Monday, May 14, 2012

-- Florida Dreaming --

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 May closes out soon and with it, summer overtakes the southeast… summer heat, humidity, foliage, bugs, snakes…. If any Ivory-bills fledged this spring they may just now be beginning to travel around the forest greenery with their parents, just as Ivory-bill searching is largely forced to wind down to a standstill.
Not too much new to report (a few re-hash articles have been on the Web), so I'll just toss out the little bit of visual entertainment I can find: 
First this nice-sounding double-knock apparently recorded in the Choctawhatchee (around the 5-6 second point; & turn your volume up):

 

the fellows recording it made a pleasant companion travelogue of their venture (no additional IBWO material though):

 

From the serious (I assume/hope) to the oddball… an individual on Facebook casually claims the recent sighting of 2 Ivory-bills on a tree somewhere in central Florida (outside Gainesville, I believe, but not certain), and got at least one blurry photo:


The bird certainly has an interesting posture, size, and neck(!), and is on an interesting tree (though poor-looking habitat), but lacks key features of an IBWO (longer bill, white saddleback) and so it goes....
Here's an artist's rendering of an IBWO in a similar pose:

and here, some Pileateds similarly posing:





Summer seems to always bring a few more interesting tidbits than I expect, but still am not anticipating a great deal of posting over next few months. We'll see what happens....
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2 comments:

Frank said...
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Anonymous said...

Well...did anybody at least interview the Facebook lady about the woodpecker on the base of the tree? Obviously a long shot. But it bears similarity to a couple of anecdotes from the Steinberg book from a few years back.