— Matters That Keep Me Awake At Night — ;)

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[ How many of these are flying around the Southeast U.S.... nobody knows... ]

I’ve repeatedly covered all this before, but with so many new folks oddly drawn into the Ivory-bill story recently (despite little new evidence) maybe worth stating yet again in a single posting, the things troubling me most:

1)  Large partially leucistic woodland birds (with abnormal white feathering) exist. Not just leucistic Pileateds, but leucistic herons, anhingas, ducks, other waterfowl, crows, raptors… and they in turn may have mutant parents, siblings, offspring. In distant and/or brief observations a few could seem like Ivory-bills (especially with people often being encouraged to focus so strongly on the ’trailing white edge’). Such birds of course are very rare… exactly as are purported IBWO sightings…. 

2)  People have searched for, and tried to define Ivory-bill treework (cavities, scaling) for decades. Automatic cameras (not subject to human foibles, and working hours on end) have been focused on such selected, suspected work (taking millions of snapshots) and yet never clearly captured an Ivory-billed Woodpecker, despite this species foraging and using cavities every day of its life. Additionally, the ACONE system, used in the Big Woods to snap pics of birds using the most obvious open flyway through the area, never detected an IBWO.  :(

3)  For Ivory-bills to be around today, there likely had to be many more than the 2 dozen Tanner estimated in the entire South in the 40s. There is a fine line between there being ENOUGH IBWOs persisting to account for them continually existing through the last 80+ years (especially given how many states that claims still come from), yet so few existing that credible encounters (visual or auditory) with them are as infrequent as they are. It is possible, but the math is dicey because of the problems of genetic bottleneck and healthy stock.

With all that said, I happen to still believe the species exists in at least 3 states (in fact I think the ONLY way for it to likely persist at all is to be in multiple states), but I recognize the fine 'threading of a needle' that must entail for that to be the case. It is why, for me, IF Ivory-bills are ever documented, the interesting story won't be that they were found, but rather trying to understand the deficiencies of human science that allowed them to hang on so easily/successfully out of sight for so long!

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