==> THEblog devoted, since 2005, to news & commentary on the most iconic bird in American ornithology, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (IBWO)... and sometimes other schtuff [contact: cyberthrush@gmail.com]
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Overview of the USFWS final summary report, "Recovery Plan For the Ivory-billed Woodpecker":
I'll say, for starters, that I basically enjoyed reading this USFWS summary of the 5-year organized effort to find the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, which fleshes out in greater detail some of what has transpired over that time period. But... I also recognize that in some quarters out there the very title of the document ("Recovery Plan For the Ivory-billed Woodpecker") will be viewed with utter amusement. An alternative working title might've been, "What Friggin' Little We Know With Certainty About the Wholly Mysterious and Elusive Lord God Bird" ;-)) The emphasis in this summary document, in some ways, remains not on what we know about Ivory-bills, but on how uncertain and sparse our knowledge thereof is. And in short, there is nothing here that will sway proponents of the IBWO debate from their entrenched positions.
The first 35 pages of the 160-pg. offering are the main body of the report, and largely recapitulate what has already more-or-less been publicly available, much of which will be familiar to readers of this blog. The main findings from each of 11 states where organized searching took place, are reviewed on a year-by-year basis (habitat descriptions and conservation aspects are also reviewed). This includes mentions, though not with great detail, of sighting claims and auditory encounters, that were deemed interesting/credible enough for inclusion, as well as possible ARU remote acoustic recordings. These potential claims were of course few-and-far-between (over scattered areas) compared to the initial mini-flurry of reports for the Arkansas Big Woods and Florida Choctawhatchee areas. I would've liked to have seen more specifics on some of the sighting claims and maybe greater indication of which claims were granted most credence (although this is somewhat surmisable from the wording).
I had also hoped for a fuller report on the ACONE automatic camera system deployed in Arkansas, which is only alluded to in one of the appendices --- I take this lack of coverage to mean that the technology (which seemed to hold great promise, despite mechanical problems), may have been a failure --- my assumption 'til someone informs me otherwise.(???)
I also wish the report could've drawn some conclusions/recommendations for independent searchers on where best to continue their efforts, but there is nothing like a rank-ordering of locales most worthy of further time (one suspects there is simply no widespread agreement on this).
Overall, these are minor quibbles.
More interesting really, are the several Appendices which constitute much of the document, and which offer greater detail on aspects of the search not always fully-covered in public before.Appendix D includes over 20 abstracts of various studies that were offshoots of the Ivory-bill search, many relating to habitat or ecological variables pertinent to our understanding of IBWOs (Appendices H and I also cover habitat). One would need to access/read the full papers to gain fuller insights from these studies, but the abstracts do bestow a sense of the variety of research carried out in support of the IBWO effort (research which may in some instances be valuable to other species or situations).
Other Appendices cover some of the actual ground-search protocols (which were sometimes controversial) that were employed at various times through the 5-year study.And Appendix C breaks down the costs of the overall project.Appendix K serves up USFWS responses to the motley group of comments that were addressed to the original "Draft" Recovery Plan.
I especially liked Appendix E which is Chuck Hunter's well-done succinct summary of the natural history of the IBWO, pulling together in a nutshell a lot of information and key points that are otherwise scattered among different sources/volumes. One simple, but I think important figure (actually in Appendix F) is "Figure F2" (pg. 97), a simple map showing the entire interlocking southern river basin system stretching across the former historical range of the IBWO.(IF Ivory-bills travel along riverine systems, they have a lot of roadway.)
The entire report and Appendices tend to focus quite heavily on the search effort in Arkansas, not surprising given the amount of energy and man-hours spent there. Still I couldn't help but wonder, if S. Carolina and Florida didn't deserve a little more space and detail, given certain reports (perhaps Louisiana as well), but again a minor quibble (and they are of course covered).
All of which brings me backwards to Appendix B... the "fuzzy" --- the Luneau video, of course. I was surprised that an entire Appendix was devoted to discussion of David Luneau's blurry 4-second clip, an obvious nod to all those who feel this was Cornell's most crucial piece of evidence (I've never regarded it as such). The report goes to some length to argue that USFWS did not find adequate support for David Sibley's (and others') contention that the film clip shows a normal Pileated Woodpecker with wings 'twisting' in flight and escaping at a certain angle from the camera. Quite the contrary, USFWS suggests that the only good (or at least best) match for the bird-in-question is indeed an Ivory-billed Woodpecker, until some future advanced technical analysis shows otherwise. A couple of bits from the report:
"...to date no video of an actual Pileated Woodpecker exhibits from frame to frame the same plumage characteristics and flight mechanics exhibited by the woodpecker in the Luneau video."
and
"Our review of the presented arguments leads us to conclude that the alternative interpretations of Sibley et al. (2006) and Collinson (2007) fail to credibly support their assertion that the woodpecker in the Luneau video could reasonably be a Pileated Woodpecker."
... Uhhhh, let the food fight begin anew!! ;-)
Critics will no doubt feel their views got short-shrift here. It might have almost been worth including a "dissenting opinion" appendix where some of the major critics got one more chance to state the problems with the evidence as they see it, given the highly controversial nature of what is being addressed (I wouldn't be surprised if trenchant critiques of the report are, right now, being composed!).
Unfortunately, in many polarized quarters, rightly or wrongly, any 'summary' report (on this topic) from USFWS, Cornell, or The Nature Conservancy, simply will NOT be viewed as objective or credible at this point... we still need a clear video or carcass! (I don't know for sure about real objectivity, but perceived objectivity on this subject is torn to shreds by now.)
A lot more can be dissected from this USFWS summary, but let's cut to the chase... In the end, the CRUX of the 5-year search and debate remains: This bird has been spotted, so it is claimed, sparsely but nonetheless repeatedly, over and over and over and over... again, for 65+ years, on many occasions by individuals with the experience and credentials that ought allow them to accurately identify an Ivory-billed Woodpecker. And YET, consequent searches have failed over and over and over and over... again to consistently relocate the birds reported. USFWS attempts in this document to make the case that the evidence-on-file is persuasive, and that there are historical/logical/ecological reasons why the species may be so difficult to re-locate (let alone, photograph) once it is reported. We can all agree that for any given instance, even subset of instances, this failure to relocate a bird, following initial encounter, may be plausible. The skeptics will part company though with that plausibility when the same fate is met in case after case after case after case, ongoing for 65 years. And there the debate stymies. Nothing in this USFWS document will put to rest the numbers or probability game that can be played by either side of the controversy. The naysayers, however, can never prove their point; they can only keep slowly building their evidentiary case (with every year that passes without documentation). The 'believers' or 'optimists' are the only ones who can yet be 'proved' right... and some of us still believe that is a very real probability.
This document from the USFWS is a nice addition to the IBWO literature, and there will be further reports and volumes still to come down the pike. Stay tuned.I'm not certain if this story will yet end with a bang or a whimper. -------------------------------------------------------------------------
(As several matters are consuming my time at the moment, not sure just how quickly I'll get through it and make any comments.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The USFWS has announced release of their "Final Recovery Plan" for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, assembling the results of the 5-year search throughout the Southeast, and replacing the earlier "Draft" Recovery Plan. The announcement here:
However, the specific site where the report (long pdf) will be available is currently down, but may be back up by end of day (Sun.) or soon thereafter, or just keep an eye on their main Ivory-bill webpage: http://www.fws.gov/ivorybill/
(or you can always request a hard copy of the document through regular mail) -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Louisiana searcher Mike Collins has recently referenced continuing efforts to have his Ivory-bill flight dynamics paper published in an academic journal. For interested parties it is available on the Web here:
Sorry for lapse, involved with other work and another Web endeavor at moment... besides, looks like this summer might actually experience the lull in IBWO news I expect every summer. End of July marks the 5th anniversary for this blog though (...are we having fun yet!?), so probably oughta definitely post something this month! Expecting things to be relatively quiet between now and December, though certainly next winter season could bring in a few more reports of note on the story that keeps on giving. As fall/winter approaches would be interested to hear from anyone with formal plans laid out to search in 2011 (just let me know whether anything communicated is okay for public consumption or only for my info). Especially interested to hear of any further explorations in the works for western/central Mississippi, the Florida Panhandle, or western Tennessee, but of course any area of focus would be good to know about (pretty clearly some searching will continue in Arkansas and Louisiana). -------------------------------------------------------------------------
A member of IBWO Researchers Forum directs folks to this old (1972) Life Magazine article available online, about John Dennis's search for the IBWO in the Big Thicket of Texas:
The vast majority of readers here no doubt know the Mason Spencer story which, in a sense, initiated the whole modern-day Ivory-bill saga back in Louisiana in April 1932, but for the few who may not, always worth a re-telling. The following version comes from Tim Gallagher's "The Grail Bird":
"The next time the ivory-bill reared its beautiful head was in the early 1930s, in a huge tract of virgin timber along Louisiana's Tensas River. Mason Spencer, a country lawyer and state legislator from the wilds of northeastern Louisiana, was visiting the director of the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries at his headquarters in Baton Rouge. At one point the director asked him how the moonshine was in his area. "One of our game wardens must be drinking it," he said, "because he says he sees ivory-bills there." ""He's right. I've seen them myself," replied Spencer. Incredulous, the director drew up a collecting permit for Spencer and challenged him to prove it. A short time later, Spencer came back with a freshly shot male ivory-bill and, as legend has it, flung it down on the director's desk."
In modern-day parlance, "DOH!!"
[ Word of the incident filtered back to Arthur Allen at Cornell, and three years later the famous Singer Tract expedition was launched. ]
So began the ornithological story that refuses to die... --------------------------------------------------------------------------
Repeating once again just a few of the passages from Tanner's classic monograph on Ivory-billed Woodpeckers: "The chief difficulty of the study has been that of drawing conclusions from relatively few observations, necessary because of the extreme scarcity of the bird. My own observations of the birds have been entirely confined to a few individuals in one part of Louisiana... the conclusions drawn from them will not necessarily apply to the species as it once was nor to individuals living in other areas. The difficulty of finding the birds, even when their whereabouts was known, also limited the number of observations. Especially was this true in the non-breeding season. With these considerations in mind, one must draw conclusions carefully and with reservations."
"The dominance of cypress in the bird's [Florida] habitat is a condition not found outside of the Florida region. Another difference is that Ivory-bills in Florida frequently fed in the pine woods bordering the swamps, something that has never been recorded in the region of the Mississippi Delta and only rarely elsewhere."
"There is no one type of forest that is the habitat of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker; it varies greatly in different sections of the bird's range."
"One condition is characteristic of all Ivory-bill habitats, namely, that other species of woodpeckers are common or abundant in those places." "Hunting for localities where Ivory-bills were, and in those localities trying to find the birds, was like searching for an animated needle in a haystack."
"Winter and early spring are the only good seasons for investigating Ivory-bill habitats. Leaves are then off the trees, allowing good visibility and hearing, the birds are quite active and noisy, and the cooler weather makes work in the woods pleasant. Work in the summer is practically a waste of time because of the dense vegetation, silent birds, and depressing heat."
"Ivory-bill sign shows as bare places on recently dead limbs and trees, where the bark has been scaled off clean for a considerable extent. Pileateds do some scaling too, but it is usually confined to smaller limbs and to those longer dead. Freshness of sign can be judged by any appearance of weathering, which will soon turn bare wood a grayish color. Extensive scaling of the bark from a tree which has died so recently that the bark is still tight, with a brownish or reddish color to the exposed wood showing that the work is fresh, is one good indication of the presence of Ivory-bills."
"All the Ivory-bills that I have ever seen I located first by hearing them call and then going to them."
"Considering the maximum abundance of the Ivory-bill to have been one pair per six square miles, of the Pileated to be six pairs per one square mile, and of the Red-bellied to be twenty-one pairs per one square mile, the relative abundance of these birds would be one Ivory-bill to thirty-six Pileated to 126 Red-bellied Woodpeckers."
"Considering all the evidence, I believe that Ivory-bills were not sedentary birds, but sometimes wandered considerable distances.... Furthermore, the Ivory-bill is well adapted to traveling for long distances. It is a strong flier with a fast flight for a woodpecker, and individuals have been observed feeding over several square miles."
"Ivory-billed Woodpeckers usually travel in pairs; at least that is the number most often observed. Single individuals seen are usually unmated birds."
"Ivory-bills probably stay paired throughout the year and mate for life... No matter what season of the year, Ivory-bills have almost always been observed in pairs, indicating that they do not separate during the non-breeding season."
"The Ivory-bill's habit of feeding and living almost its whole life in and near the tops of trees makes it very unlikely that any mammal could prey on one."
"There is further evidence that food is the decisive or 'limiting' factor for Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. Several times in various parts of Florida many trees have been killed by fire, storms, or other causes. Ivory-bills have appeared in these places and fed upon these trees as long as the borers beneath the bark were common, and then they have disappeared, moved elsewhere."
"The flight of the Ivory-bill... is strong and usually direct, with steady wing-beats. They can take flight quickly either from a perch or from a hole, springing into the air with very little descent before getting up to speed. They often fly above the tree tops, dodging the trees with very little deviation from their course. In the thick woods it is ordinarily difficult to tell how far the Ivory-bills fly, but I am quite sure that their flight is often extended for half a mile or more."
"Ivory-bills are not social or gregarious birds; they have apparently always lived in solitary pairs, and as long as the birds can mate, they are capable of reproduction and increase. With small numbers, inbreeding could occur, but there is no evidence that this would be harmful. Large numbers are not necessary for the continued existence of the Ivory-bill."
"When the food supply is sufficient, the woodpecker is probably resident or sedentary, with a feeding range from three to four miles across. There is considerable evidence that pairs or individuals sometimes move long distances in search of forests supplying an adequate quantity of food."
"The daily activities of the woodpeckers during the non-breeding season follow a fairly definite pattern. Beginning about sunrise, they feed and move actively during the early morning; they are quiet during the middle of the day, feed again in late afternoon, and then end the day by going to roost about dusk."
"The only factors discovered which have definitely affected the numbers and distribution of the species are the quantity of food available to the birds and their destruction by man."
and reiterating one last time, "...one must draw conclusions carefully and with reservations." ------------------------------------------------------
It's the middle of May... do you know where any Ivory-billed Woodpeckers are???
Traditionally, May, with its heat, humidity, leaf-out, and skeeters, is the end of the Ivory-bill search season, and while kents and hints and further tidbits of continuing possibilities do dribble in, nothing appears imminent that is likely to be persuasive to the many who now perceive the whole IBWO search as an extensive goose chase of the wild sort. Indeed, since Cornell's 'official' announcement that they are suspending their search, most of the public seem to presume the search is over and done with. It isn't, and won't be for awhile yet, but will be difficult to ever again excite folks over announced sightings or fuzzy pictures or claims not directly-accompanied with clearcut video or a dead carcass.
Perhaps a long, slow summer ahead for those of us who don't conform to the wild-goose-chase scenario; a chance to review the amassed data and claims, as best it is available online, without awaiting whatever conclusions(?) Cornell or others may publish next year. (If any of you independent searchers who don't have an internet presence and who've contacted me privately in the past, are continuing some searching through the summer, please email me and let me know what you're up to and where, just so I can keep track of current activity --- thanks.)
In other (non-IBWO) news, Molly the Owl's 4 barn owlets are very close to fledging (at least one spent some time outside the nestbox last night):
Nothing whatsoeverto do with Ivory-billed Woodpeckers... just a bit for people who are either fans of owls or fans of ABBA (if you are among the many who don't care for EITHER, then do not, I repeat DO NOT!, click on the arrow):
"Everywhere there have been camera studies, as long as it's in wooded or semi-wooded habitat, rat snakes emerge as the single most important predator. They're common throughout the range, and they're really good at finding bird nests."
and
"...rat snakes are very opportunistic," Weatherhead said. "I have a picture of a rat snake eating a full-grown squirrel. So that's a mouthful. They're generalists both in terms of the mammals they eat and in terms of the birds that they prey on. They'll take whatever birds they encounter, and because they're such good climbers, they can get to both low nests and high nests. They can climb just about any kind of tree. They eat bird eggs, fledglings and sometimes they'll even get the mom if she's sitting on the eggs..." -------------------------------------------------------------------------
