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Skeptics are fond of pointing out things we can't know for certain about purported Ivory-bill sightings, so I'll take a moment to point out a few other things we simply don't know for certain:
1) In the last 60 years how many times have birders in deep woods briefly seen a large black-and-white woodpecker fly through the canopy and routinely written it off as a Pileated without a second thought... when in fact it was an Ivory-bill?
2) How many non-birders over that time have encountered Ivory-bills, but didn't know what they were seeing and never reported it?
3) How many birders over that time have seen Ivory-bills, and feel certain of it, but never reported it, believing it either unethical or simply useless to do so?
4) And finally, we simply don't know for certain what the behaviors, habitat needs, food requirements, breeding habits, or lifespans of any IBWOs remaining today are -- at best we know some info only as it pertained to a small sample of Ivory-bills from over 60 years ago; even information about calls, wingbeats, and flight pattern, could have changed from the small (representative???) sampling obtained early on, over the passing generations since. Humans have a myopic tendency to perceive all species, other than themselves, as unchanging over time... it ain't necessarily so.
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