On the website for PBS's "Nova ScienceNow" Ivory-bill segment (Jan. 11) there is a 'comment' section -- I thought this one was worth a small chuckle:
"I could not help but notice while watching the [Luneau] video that the two expert ornithologists [John Fitzpatrick and Jerome Jackson] would be hard to distinguish in a clip as blurry as the disputed woodpecker clip."
In case you're not aware of the surprising similarity that is being referred to go to this page for a good pair of pictures, that makes the commenter's case well:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3302/03-ask.html
And on a completely different note, another one of those pesky leucistic Pileateds has been reported in Arkansas -- this one by Dan Scheiman (with the Cornell recovery team) on the AR. birding listserv:
"A woman near Heber Springs reported a partially leucistic Pileated...actually, sounds more like a MOSTLY(not just partially) leucistic individual that no doubt could easily be confused with.... an Ivory Gull with a severe head wound, but not much else (...except maybe a leucistic Ivory-bill!). Anyway, still awaiting a good photo or videotape of one of these oversized leucistic Pileateds with symmetrical trailing white wing edges...
Woodpecker -- all white with a red crest. The photos are nothing more than
a white blob, but her inital impression of a woodpecker and her description
of the behavior are telling."
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