-- Mobile Team Update --

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Likely the final update from Cornell's Mobile Team now posted here, as they finished out their season in South Carolina (mostly the Congaree). Here's part of their summary statement:

"Our Mobile Search Team did not see an ivory-bill, but we are encouraged
by finding several sites with high quality habitat. In many promising places we could only spend two to twenty days on the ground with a small team and we feel that we have barely scratched the surface in searching these areas. Often it took a large proportion of our time to locate the best forest in a region, giving us only several days to search parts of the better sites. Even in the Congaree National Park, where we spent most time this season, we do not rule out the existence of a few ivory-bills. More work is needed in places like the Apalachicola, Escambia, Pascagoula, and parts of the Atchafalaya and South Carolina, before it can be said whether ivory-bills are to be, or not to be. "

They covered a lot of ground in a relatively short time, and certainly are to be hugely applauded for their efforts. Having said that, and in no way meaning to detract from their work, I am still especially disappointed that they did not venture into various parts of central and south Florida, and bypassed most of Mississippi. Parts of Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Tennessee,and N. Carolina, may yet require more attention as well. But one heck of a good start... just too bad that start didn't come 40 years ago.
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-- Silence... --

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The silence from Cornell this season has been deafening... sometimes silence is golden, and sometimes silence is... well, just silence. Anyway, Rich Guthrie's interview on NPR, regarding his Ivory-bill experience with Cornell, will be on a show titled "Vox pop" from 2-3pm EDT today, here (NY station; I assume it will be archived for those needing to tune in later):

http://www.wamc.org

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-- Yet Another Sighting (Arkansas) --

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New York birder Richard Guthrie reports seeing an Ivory-bill in Arkansas while volunteering for Cornell in April. Look for his original post here:

http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html#117862

Thus far, few details given, but note he says he will be on a NY NPR station tomorrow to tell more, or go to the May 8th entries here for more info:

http://blogs.timesunion.com/birding/

Addendum: Rich has added another post now at the above listserv including a few of the details already available at his blog (still, a lot of details missing) --- I would think the NPR program tomorrow might flesh out more specifics, or maybe Cornell will post their own summary of the sighting at their site (and maybe even ACONE will update their site at some point!! ; - ) Still awaiting possible news from one other state as well as summer approaches.
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-- Too Good Not to Share --

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Not specifically IBWO material, but over at Ivorybill Researchers Forum a poster gives a fascinating account of a Pileated getting attacked by a snake --- no video but some nice photographic stills (I've never heard of a snake taking on a PIWO before):

http://www.ibwo.net/forum/showpost.php?p=2392&postcount=80

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-- Past Luneau Interview --

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A 2-page January interview with David Luneau here. Worth a read.

Things are largely settling down for the summer. There's one bit of loose ends yet to be tied up, but then I suspect we're in for several mostly slow, boring months ahead.


....And from the quirky side of the news, "GrrlScientist" over at "Living the Scientific Life" notes that at 3 min. and 4 seconds past 2 o'clock this morning the time could be recorded as: 02:03:04 05/06/07 : - )

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-- If Only Cheney Would Follow... --

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Of note: Interior Dept. official Julie McDonald, who oversaw USFWS endangered species policy, resigned her position last Monday under a cloud (...is ANYone in this Administration NOT under a cloud???).

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-- Moving Toward the Weekend --

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Dr. Hill has posted what is likely his next to last post for this search season here. Nothing significant to report. Sounds like much of the last few weeks will involve foot searches along the Choctawhatchee. Listening deployments will end come the last of May (and Dr. Mennill is out of the country, delaying release of some of the acoustic analysis). With luck, camera deployments will continue through the summer. Hill hopes to release a summary of the season's efforts as soon as possible in the summer, and will be speaking at the August AOU conference in Wyoming on their findings. His reports and updates have generally been far more punctual than Cornell's.
Speaking of which, the ACONE update of automatic remote camera findings in the Big Woods, promised for May 1, has yet to appear (not sure why they even announced a precise date, if there was any uncertainty as to fulfilling it?). Cornell's Big Woods' season also officially over (camera deployment continuing there as well).
While there is some chatter coming out from another locale at present, such is the case every few months, so nothing I'd call substantive as yet, and of course independent searchers will be continuing various efforts in other habitats.

What we have now is no longer the saga of, or obsession over, a single species, but rather a lesson in how real science proceeds and plays out when allowed to. It's a story (determining the existence of a species) that in large measure has barely begun and could go on for quite awhile (...or, be over soon, with but a single photo), and it is critical in it's longer-term ramifications. All "science" includes unprovable assumptions and no "science" includes 100% certainty... ever. But possibly more on all of that later.
.............................................................................................
from the Web Grab Bag:

Australian cockatoos are probably my fa-a-a-avorite birds in the world. This touching, several-paged story of a pair hopscotched around the internet quite awhile back, but in case you missed it:

http://www.juliusbergh.com/cocky/

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-- A Reader's Thought --

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I thought I'd heard it all before, but today a reader sends in this simple thought I can't recall ever running across:

"Your message today about numerous vast areas
for searching brings me back to an idea I
have had a long time, the use of dogs
trained by scent to search large areas for
the IB. I know from personal experience a dog
can quickly make the invisible appear.
Goodness knows there are too many
stuffed specimens from which to get
the scent. A dog multiplies the searching
power of human by one thousand percent."

I can't imagine this is practical or someone would've considered it before now, and I'm doubtful a dog can pick up a scent from a decades-old museum specimen, but what do I know... Any thoughts from folks who know about such matters? There's also the whole issue of dogs making their way through very brushy and/or swampy habitat I s'pose.
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-- Sooo Many Places... --

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Skeptics will have a field day if no solid new IBWO evidence arises by the end of May following this year's searches. Of course just a few years ago this year's two areas of greatest focus, the Big Woods and Choctawhatchee, weren't even on the Ivory-bill radar, though many other areas were. Moreover, I continue to hold the somewhat contrarian view that, for multiple reasons, the Congaree (S.C.) and Texas Big Thicket are not likely to yield IBWOs either --- but the point is that there remain so many other areas in need of thorough searches in other states. Why the Cornell Mobile Team spent no time in Fla. outside of the Panhandle I can't fathom, nor the short shrift they gave to Mississippi --- but of course they had limited time to briefly explore some widely spread out areas.

Over a year ago Bill Pulliam posted a state-by-state listing (and he didn't do all pertinent states) of areas that he deemed potentially IBWO-worthy using Terraserver. My own belief continues to be that Fla., MS., and La. are the states of greatest immediate interest (though there are several others).
Below are just the listings Bill came up with at the time for Florida and Mississippi (I have copied them verbatim, but you can go to his site here to review both these two states and the others he analyzed). In short, there is much exploration still needed, and of these locales I wouldn't even be focussing necessarily on the ones of best habitat, but rather on the locales of least frequent human use or trafficking:
------------------------------------------------------------------
"FLORIDA
Just the major areas; there are hundreds of small batches of nice bottomlands

PANHANDLE:
Pensacola Bay tributaries --

1. Escambia River (entire length) quite nice
2. Yellow River (entire length) plus Titi Creek and lower Shoal River
3. East Bay River

Others --

4. Choctawhatchee River (entire length) plus Pine Log
5. Appalachicola River, entire length but especially below Bristol; extensive swamps in lower delta.
6. Ochlockonee below Lake Talquin, plus Bradwell Bay and other flatwoods swamps around lower portion

WEST PENINSULA:

7. Extensive coastal flatwoods from in Taylor, Dixie, Levy, and Citrus counties. Large continuous forest areas from just behind the saltwater line for 5-10 miles inland, plus a large patch in east-central Levy county inland of highway 19.
8. Suwannee River (entire length) plus lowermost Withlacoochee River and Santa Fe River below I-75, contiguous with the coastal forest
9. Withlacoochee River (not the same one as #8) along the Citrus - Sumter county line
10. Upper Hillsborough - Withlacoochee area in Hillsborough, Pasco, and Polk counties.
11. Peace River from Bowling Green to Charlotte Harbor

SOUTH FLORIDA (below Lake Okeechobee):

12. Corkscrew Swamp. Beautiful and famous but more fragmented than I expected.
13. Big Cypress area. The largest patch in Florida. Especially north of Highway 41, including the Seminole and Miccosukee Reservations and Fakahatchee Strand.
14. Northeastern Hendry county, a lot of interesting looking areas, mixed forest and open land, hard to interpret from the air -- Devil's garden, Wild Cow Island, places around there.
15. Loxahatchee NWR (though it seems pretty unlikely they'd have been overlooked here)

ST. JOHN'S RIVER BASIN
This is some awfully heavily settled country for much to have been overlooked, but there is interesting habitat:

16. Upper St. Johns on Orange/Brevard county line.
17. Spruce Creek Swamp, southern Volusia county
18. Middle St. Johns from estreme eastern Lake county to areas surrounding Lake George and Crescent Lake. Quite a lot of nice swampland but fairly well-populated with those hairless ape creatures too.
19. Ocklawaha River in central Marion county.

And finally...

20. Lower Nassau River along the Nassau/Duval county line (including Timucuan Preserve). Fairly small and isolated.

MISSISSIPPI
Some interesting areas that I've heard little about.

1. Mississippi mainstem from Bolivar to Tunica counties -- many smallish forest fragments, more than in other states.
2. Delta National Forest and Panther Swamp NWR -- some of the largest forest patches in the Mississippi Alluvial corridor.
3. Big Black River, Mathiston to I-20 -- narrow but very long.
4. Mississippi mainstem and lower Buffalo River in southern Adams and northwestern Wilkinson counties -- rather extensive forests. Worth noting that this along with LA areas #9 and #10 forms a pretty good size area of almost interconnected forest.
5. Pearl River below Columbia to highway 90 (also in LA) -- primo area, very extensive, goes far beyond the portions that have been intensively explored by birders recently. Reports of possibly two Ivorybills from this area in the past few weeks.
6. Leaf and Pascagoula Rivers from McClain to I-10 -- another large area."
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in short, there's a tad more work to do folks, no matter what this season's outcome (not that everyone will want to hear this)....
...............................................................................................

And from the Web Grab Bag:

NY TImes covers the sex lives of ducks here.

...or, if you can't access NY Times site go here for same story:

http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/070430_duckgenital_evolution.html

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-- Cornell Empty-handed --

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Martjan Lammertink interviewed here, saying Cornell's search of parts of the southeast is over for this season and largely empty-handed of any new evidence for Ivory-bills. He remains impressed with the habitat of the Congaree area (S.C.), where he thinks he may have heard a lone Ivory-bill double-knock, but is unimpressed with the Choctawhatchee region (the Congaree also being one of Bob Russell's top spots for potential IBWOs). Cornell will no doubt release their own official preliminary report of the season at some point.
So far as I know only the Choctawhatchee team is continuing to search well into May of this search season, and Dr. Hill is due for an update-release, if there is any news worth updating.
Reminder that the ACONE automatic camera system in Big Woods is due for a new release tomorrow as well, but seems likely there will be no Ivory-bill photos/video out of this season.
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-- Whatever --

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Not much substantively to report so I'll just pass along a tidbit an acquaintance sent along to me. It's from an April 21st post on a birding listserv group in which a novice S.C. birder birding the Congaree innocently mentions the following toward the end of a routine post:

"...A couple of photographers were standing along the Weston Lake Loop in stunned silence. one told me they'd heard such a strange sound and it came from up in a tree but they couldn't find its source. She said it sounded like a "horn". As I walked on, I, too, heard some non-melodic sounds from a distant tree but left the man setting up his camera to find and record..."

At least mildly interesting given the number of rumors hailing from S.C. over the past year (...and possibly also worth noting that following their sojourn in Texas/La. it was to the Congaree that Cornell's Mobile Team rapidly returned to).

A tad farther north Jerry Condrey (who claims an IBWO-pair sighting in 2004) continues to plan for further exploration of North Carolina's Green Swamp area (near NC/SC border). He notes that not only is the habitat good, but it is largely overlooked and under-searched (IBWO habitat-focus having historically rarely gone that far north).

Meanwhile Cornell has been largely silent on any results from the Big Woods this season. Given the bashing they've taken in some quarters one could expect they might not report any gathered evidence until absolutely all 'i's' are dotted and 't's' crossed this time, but more likely their silence reflects lack of anything to report.

Lastly, although there are really no new arguments to be made in the Ivory-bill debate, Brit Martin Collinson attempts to tie together the given skeptical arguments in the form of a speculative analogy here. From all sides of the issue it's all been said before. As long as sightings claims keep coming in all we can do is watch and wait for pictures. Field notes won't do it, sketches won't do it, lengthy sightings won't do it, audio won't do it, DNA won't do it (it will have to be dated and proven uncontaminated); pictures or a dead carcass are now required.
...................................................................................

From Web Grab Bag:

Everyone loves a mystery (warbler):

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/mystery

...and a fun recent post from Julie Zickefoose here, if you missed it, combining Purple Martins and Elk of all things:

http://www.juliezickefoose.com/blog/2007/04/madness-of-martins-and-elk.html
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-- Chatter?... Not Much --

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Chatter to my email box has dwindled to a pittance in the last month-or-so giving me doubt that there will be any substantial Ivory-bill news (meaning photo or video) forthcoming in the final weeks of this search season. Even a photo arising from Big Woods, Choctawhatchee, or South Carolina, at this point, could be a tad anti-climactic (...for some of us anyway), so much focus has been expended there. What would truly be exciting would be a photo coming out of a less publicized area of interest (southern Fla., Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Illinois, N. Carolina) --- not likely happening this go-around.
It may be worth noting again that other than sheer luck from an automatic camera unit (and BTW, the next release of data from the ACONE automatic camera system deployed in Arkansas is scheduled for May 1st), the only likely way of attaining a clear, indisputable IBWO photo is to locate an active nesthole, not a simple task. In fact, FWIW, I often think it perplexing that in 40+ years of on-and-off birding, and living in various parts of the country, I've never even come across a Crow's nest, despite the fact that Crows are among the most common, noisy, large, and ubiquitous birds in every area I've resided; and I've certainly stumbled upon the nests of many far smaller, scarcer songbirds along the way; the nestsites of large birds can be surprisingly elusive however, let alone cavity-dwellers.

If no conclusive photographic documentation is impending, then final summaries this season from Cornell, Auburn, S.C., Texas, USF&W, and Cornell's Mobile Team, will be more important than ever in determining next winter's far more limited exploration. There remains plenty of time and habitat to search; funding though, is yet another matter... In the meantime, intrepid, independent individuals continue their own efforts in various locales as time and practicality permits.
.........................................................................................

Grabbed off the Web:

Need caffeine?... well, take a shower:

http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/04/get_your_morning_started_right.php


Got kids?... now you just know they want to dissect owl pellets:

http://www.kidwings.com/index.htm
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-- Happy Earth Day --

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April 22, 2007:

No IBWO news at the moment; so just Happy Earth Day !!

Tomorrow, the annual convention of the American Birding Association opens in Lafayette, Louisiana for a week --- despite the location, no full-fledged Ivory-bill presentations on the agenda.
.................................................................................

From elsewhere on the Web :

"senior citizen" Whooping Crane dies:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/19/ap/tech/main2708420.shtml

....want a better sense of just how small we are, read on:

http://www.sciencemusings.com/blog/2007/04/cognitive-dissonance.html

And moving to yet a totally different arena, a couple of newsbits of note here:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/20/662/

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/20/652/

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-- New Bird Genus --

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Just a grab bag article today on yet another new bird genus discovered (assuming one even trusts such biological taxonomy schemes), this time in the South Pacific:

http://news.ufl.edu/2007/04/19/frogmouth-genus/

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-- Chew On This... --

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No matter where you stand in the Ivory-bill debate ya gotta love stories like this one:

http://www.ibwo.net/forum/showpost.php?p=2250&postcount=82

Stay tuned.... (odder things have happened).

..................................................................

....but enough about eating Ivory-bills --- from the Web Grab Bag:

if you eat chicken, you might want to read this:

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/government/85/8515gov2.html
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