Ivory Billed Woodpecker

[benos]

Holy crap! This is absolutely amazing.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=712430

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4622633

http://www.ivorybill.org/story.html

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20050...woodpecker.html

Who'd a thunk it. And in the U.S. no less, where it seems as if birders don't miss much. I once went to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum to (try to) see the only known Rufus-backed Robin sighted in the U.S. It's just crazy to think that one bird of one species in the U.S. would have been spotted. Well, birders are a weird lot.

be

[robomanusa]

Geez, thats a big woodpecker!

I can understand how they mighta become extinct though.... it wouldnt take long to for something like that jackhammering on the tree outside your window, before you hammered it with a shotgun....hehe

[Rob Boudrie]

The writeup at http://www.ivorybill.org/bios.html contains an amazing quote that apparently slipped by the censors:

The lands that hunters and fishermen have conserved have allowed this bird a place to live into the 21st century. Without these people and their interest in saving bottomland forests, I doubt that the bird would have survived.”

[eerw]

from an engraving by John J. Audubon (left) and an artist rendering from the journal Science.

[shred]

Cool. my dad has a good story about being sat on by an endangered species. They were birdwatching somewhere and the rare bird landed right on his head.

[Rifter]

It's unfortunate about some of the species that vanish. The carrier pigeon was abundant across the country, and they got hunted to extinction over the course of a few decades. There are 3 birds that have become extinct, that I would have loved to have seen in person. The Carrier Pigeon (Used to raise Birmingham roller pigeons, so I have a soft spot for doves and pigeons), the Carolina Parakeet, and the Dodo bird. I can see how some species of animals die off because of their delicate balance with nature... but it does require gross stupidity to kill off a population of some animals.

[diehli]

Cool.  my dad has a good story about being sat on by an endangered species.    They were birdwatching somewhere and the rare bird landed right on his head.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

And we wonder why they're endangered...........

[SiG Lady]

I'll never forget the day I saw the neighborhood Pileated Woodpecker (Marin County residential woods, CA)... God, it's about two feet long!! My roommate was a birder and only now and then did locals see the one reputed to be in our neck of the woods, but I was encouraged to watch for it as I was home a lot during the day. [Erik, that was when I worked nights at Jerry's Farmhouse. Bird was sighted in Lagunitas.] So, I was talking on the phone one day, staring out the window at nothing in particular, then suddenly this THING starts climbing up the side of a tree across the driveway... It was huge!! I hung up and called my roommate (who was at work) and the rest was history. We talked about it for days.

[jessej]

Good news is always better than bad news. Seems to be rare these days.

[tightloop]

My sons father in law is doing cartwheels..he is an ornithologist......

[Kory]

When a bird is that rare, it must be pretty difficult to find a mate.

[benny hill]

Taste's like chicken.

[redmist10]

If it is indeed the ivory bill it would be really cool.

Sig, if you think the pileated is big you would freak if you saw the ivory billed. Lots bigger!

The skeptic in me says this is probably not the ivory billed...what we need is concrete proof...maybe someone as scientifically and morally upstanding as Audubon will come along and shoot one (like he always did before he painted them ) so we can get a good look at it .