-- 3-year Anniversary --

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This blog enters its third year of posting believing in the Ivory-bill's survival, despite declining confidence that it may be documented to everyone's satisfaction; especially if the numbers remaining are truly small and thinly spread out --- on the positive side, Whooping Cranes were brought back from barely more than a dozen birds, though it's doubtful any similar recovery program for IBWOs could ultimately succeed. Still, the goal must be to prove the bird's current existence, not necessarily to save it as a species, but to prove it's existence through the 50's, 60's, and 70's, when appropriate actions might indeed have been fruitful. The Ivory-bill needs to be documented, not to show the success of science, but rather to demonstrate science's utter failure in this instance, in the hope that maybe such failures can be avoided in the future. If photo/video documentation finally now arrives, much hoopla will follow, given how matters have unfolded --- but that joy should be tempered with equally matching dismay and regret at the 60 years of delay and benign neglect, that any such documentation will represent.

By the way, three Ivory-billed related talks are listed for next month's AOU meeting in Wyoming, as follows:

1) "Further evidence suggesting that Ivory-billed Woodpeckers exist in Florida" GEOFFREY
E. HILL, Dept. Biol. Sci., Auburn Univ., Auburn, AL, DANIEL J. MENNILL, Dept. Biol.,
Univ. Windsor, Windsor, ON, BRIAN R. ROLEK, RUSTY LIGON, JAMES R. HILL, III,
Auburn Univ., KYLE A. SWISTON, KARAN ODOM, Univ. Windsor, and TYLER L.
HICKS, Western State Coll., Gunnison, CO.

2) "A comparison of large woodpecker cavity morphology in the Choctawhatchee River
bottomlands and other southern forests" BRIAN W ROLEK, RUSSELL LIGON,
GEOFFREY HILL, Dept. Biol., Auburn Univ., Auburn, AL, and DANIEL J. MENNILL,
Dept. Biol. Univ. Windsor, Windsor, ON.

3) "Design and implementation of a region-wide search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker with
the objective of estimating occupancy and related parameters" ROBERT J. COOPER,
RUA S. MORDECAI, Univ. Georgia, Athens, GA, MICHAEL J. CONROY, JAMES T.
PETERSON, USGS Georgia Coop. Fish & Wildl. Res. Unit and Univ. Georgia, CLINTON
T. MOORE, Patuxent Wildl. Res. Center, Univ. Georgia, and BRADY J. MATTSSON,
Univ. Georgia.

Meanwhile, Mike Collins has announced his return to Virginia after a long season in the Pearl (La.), with no IBWO photos to show for it, but testing out a new tree climbing/stationing technique for observing the forest from above; to be continued later in year.
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Elsewhere from the Web:

If you're not already familiar with it learn more about the "Swift Night Out" program for studying the migration of fascinating Chimney Swifts to and from the U.S. each year:

http://www.concentric.net/%7edwa/page56.html

Better yet, find a chimney in your area that is used by swifts and take part in the annual survey by monitoring it on one of the assigned evenings.
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