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Over the weekend Mike Collins reported that he and another individual saw an Ivory-bill in flight at the Pearl River area in Louisiana. According to Mike they were led to this specific locale by a report passed along from Geoff Hill (of the Fla. sightings) regarding yet another person's recent claim.
Birders are arriving in Veracruz for the conference that gets underway tomorrow. Don't know if I'll get any direct reports from the meeting itself but Laura Erickson, who is there, will no doubt be reporting updates on her blog, as time and internet access allows. Will be interesting to hear how Dr. Hill's and Mennill's work is received since it probably raises as many (or more) questions than it renders answers for. Especially interesting is their use of "bark adhesion" measurements as a potential indicator of Ivory-bill presence (I'm not aware of this sign ever being empirically used before). It involves a great many difficult-to-integrate variables, but if their data stand up under scrutiny it may hold much promise for the study of other forest tracts (ASSUMING similar foraging habits in IBWOs from different geographic locales -- likely, but not necessarily the case).
And in the "fancy-meeting-you-here" dept. a birder on the Fla. listserv noted running into Bobby Harrison (of Big Woods IBWO fame) along the Choctawhatchee River of all places this weekend... hmmm, what'ya bet he was packin' binocs, a camera, and some home-made decoys???
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