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Ivory-billed Woodpecker

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Birds

             iIvory-billed Woodpecker

                             Conservation status

   Critically endangered (CR)
            Scientific classification

   Kingdom: Animalia
   Phylum:  Chordata
   Class:   Aves
   Order:   Piciformes
   Family:  Picidae
   Genus:   Campephilus
   Species: C. principalis

                                Binomial name

   Campephilus principalis
   (Linnaeus, 1758)

   The Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) is a very large
   and extremely rare or extinct member of the woodpecker family, Picidae.
   It is officially listed as an endangered species, but by the end of the
   20th century had widely been considered extinct.

   Reports of at least one male bird in Arkansas in 2004 and 2005 were
   reported in April 2005 by a team led by the Cornell Laboratory of
   Ornithology (Fitzpatrick et al., 2005). If confirmed, this would make
   the Ivory-billed Woodpecker a lazarus species, a species that is
   rediscovered alive after being considered extinct for some time.
   However, despite the highly publicized announcement of its rediscovery,
   skepticism about the reported sightings has been growing, with a number
   of prominent experts questioning the evidence.

   In June 2006, a $10,000 reward was offered for information leading to
   the discovery of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker nest, roost or feeding
   site.

   In late September 2006, a team of ornithologists from Auburn University
   and the University of Windsor published a paper detailing suggestive
   evidence for the existence of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers along the
   Choctawhatchee River in northwest Florida (Hill et al., 2006). To date,
   the group has been unable to obtain either photographic or material
   evidence of these birds, and their findings remain inconclusive. Some
   speculate that the focus should be on protection of habitat rather than
   further intrusive studies.

Description

   The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is one of the largest woodpecker species in
   the world. The largest is the closely related Imperial Woodpecker (C.
   imperialis) of western Mexico, another rare species which is very
   likely to be extinct. The Ivory-billed measures from 48 to 53 cm (19 to
   21 in) in length and 450 to 570 g (1.0 to 1.25 lb) in weight, with
   short legs and feet ending in large, curved claws.
   The contrast in plumage of the male (above) and female (below).
   Enlarge
   The contrast in plumage of the male (above) and female (below).

   The bird is shiny blue-black with extensive white markings on its neck
   and on both the upper and lower trailing edges of its wings. It has a
   pure white bill and displays a prominent top crest, red in the male and
   black in the female. These characteristics distinguish it from the
   darker-billed Pileated Woodpecker. Like all woodpeckers, it has a
   strong and straight chisel-like bill and a long, mobile, hard-tipped,
   barbed tongue. Its drum is a single or double rap, and its alarm call,
   a kent or hant, sounds like a toy trumpet repeated in a series or as a
   double note.

Habitat and diet

   Ivory-billeds are known to prefer thick hardwood swamps and pine
   forests, with large amounts of dead and decaying trees. Prior to the
   American Civil War, much of the Southern United States was covered in
   vast tracts of primeval hardwood forests that were suitable as habitat
   for the bird. At that time, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker ranged from
   east Texas to North Carolina, and from southern Illinois to Florida and
   Cuba. After the Civil War, the timber industry deforested millions of
   acres in the South, leaving only sparse isolated tracts of suitable
   habitat.

   The Ivory-billed Woodpecker feeds mainly on the larvae of wood-boring
   beetles, but also eats seeds, fruit, and other insects. The bird uses
   its enormous white bill to hammer, wedge, and peel the bark off dead
   trees to find the insects. Surprisingly, these birds need about 25 km²
   (10 square miles) per pair so they can find enough food to feed their
   young and themselves. Hence, they occur at low densities even in
   healthy populations. The more common Pileated Woodpecker may compete
   for food with this species.

Breeding biology

   The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is thought to pair for life. Pairs are also
   known to travel together. These paired birds will mate every year
   between January and May. Before they have their young, they excavate a
   nest in a dead or partially dead tree about 8–15 m up from the ground.
   Usually two to five eggs are laid and incubated for 3 to 5 weeks. Both
   parents sit on the eggs and are involved in taking care of the chicks,
   with the male taking sole responsibility at night. They feed the chicks
   for months. About five weeks after the young are born, they learn to
   fly. Even after the young are able to fly, the parents will continue
   feeding them for another two months. The family will eventually split
   up in late fall or early winter.

Status

   Heavy logging activity exacerbated by hunting by collectors decimated
   the population of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in the late 1800s. It was
   generally considered extinct in the 1920s, when a pair turned up in
   Florida, only to be shot for specimens.

   By 1938, an estimated 20 individuals remained in the wild, located in
   the old-growth forest called the Singer Tract in Louisiana, where
   logging rights were held by the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company. The
   company brushed aside pleas from four Southern governors and the
   National Audubon Society that the tract be publicly purchased and set
   aside as a reserve, and clearcut the forest. By 1944 the last known
   Ivory-billed Woodpecker, a female, was gone from the cut-over tract
   (Smithsonian p 98).

Reported sightings: 1940s to 1990s

   The Ivory-billed Woodpecker was listed as an endangered species on
   March 11, 1967, though the only evidence of its existence at the time
   was a possible recording of its call made in East Texas. The last
   reported sighting of the Cuban subspecies (C. p. bairdii), after a long
   interval, was in 1987; it has not been seen since.

   Two tantalizing photos were given to LSU museum director George Lowery
   in 1971 by a source who wished to remain anonymous but who came forward
   in 2005 as outdoorsman Fielding Lewis.

   The photos, taken with a cheap Instamatic camera, show what appears to
   be a male Ivory-Billed perched on the trunks of two different trees in
   the Atchafalaya Basin of Louisiana. The bird's distinctive bill is not
   visible in either photo and the photos - taken from a distance - are
   very grainy. Lowery presented the photos at the 1971 annual meeting of
   the American Ornithologists Union. Skeptics dismissed the photos as
   frauds, believing that the bird seen is either a misidentifed Pileated,
   or - seeing that the bird is in roughly the same position in both
   photos - a mounted specimen.

   There were numerous unconfirmed reports of the bird, but many
   ornithologists believed the species had been wiped out completely, and
   it was assessed as "extinct" by the International Union for
   Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in 1994. This assessment
   was later altered to "critically endangered" on the grounds that the
   species could still be extant.

2002 Pearl River expedition

   In 1999, there was an unconfirmed sighting of a pair of birds in the
   Pearl River region of southeast Louisiana by a forestry student, David
   Kulivan, which some experts considered very compelling. In a 2002
   expedition in the forests, swamps, and bayous of the Pearl River
   Wildlife Management Area by LSU, biologists spent 30 days searching for
   the bird.

   In the afternoon of January 27, 2002, after ten days, a rapping sound
   similar to the "double knock" made by the Ivory-billed Woodpecker was
   heard and recorded. The exact source of the sound was not found because
   of the swampy terrain, but signs of active woodpeckers were found
   (i.e., scaled bark and large tree cavities). The expedition was
   inconclusive, however, as it was determined that the recorded sounds
   were likely gunshot echoes rather than the distinctive double rap of
   the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

   Since 2002, most of the attention in the search for the Ivory-billed
   Woodpecker has turned away from the Pearl River region, although
   several unconfirmed sightings were reported there in February 2006, see
   video clips.

2004/2005 Arkansas reports

   A group of seventeen authors headed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
   reported the discovery of at least one Ivory-billed Woodpecker, a male,
   in the Big Woods area of Arkansas in 2004 and 2005, publishing the
   report in the journal Science on April 28, 2005 (Fitzpatrick et al.,
   2005).

   One of the authors, who was kayaking in the Cache River National
   Wildlife Refuge, Monroe County, Arkansas, on February 11, 2004,
   reported on a website the sighting of an unusually large red-crested
   woodpecker. This report led to more intensive searches there and in the
   White River National Wildlife Refuge, undertaken in deepest secrecy for
   fear of a stampede of bird-watchers, by experienced observers over the
   next fourteen months. About fifteen sightings occurred during the
   period (seven of which were considered compelling enough to mention in
   the scientific article), possibly all of the same bird. The secrecy
   permitted The Nature Conservancy and Cornell University to quietly buy
   up Ivory-billed habitat to add to the 120,000 acres (490 km²) of the
   Big Woods protected by the Conservancy.

   A very large woodpecker was videotaped on April 25, 2004; its size,
   wing pattern at rest and in flight, and white plumage on its back
   between the wings were cited as evidence that the woodpecker sighted
   was an Ivory-billed Woodpecker. That same video included an earlier
   image of what was suggested to be such a bird perching on a Water
   Tupelo ( Nyssa aquatica).

   The report also notes that drumming consistent with that of
   Ivory-billed Woodpecker had been heard in the region. It describes the
   potential for a thinly distributed population in the area, though no
   birds have been located away from the primary site. A current concern
   is that many bird enthusiasts will rush to the area in an attempt to
   catch a glimpse of this rare bird. Ornithologists and veteran birders
   tell of adult woodpeckers abandoning their nests and young out of alarm
   at the encroachments of overenthusiastic birdwatchers.

Debate

   In June 2005, ornithologists at Yale University, the University of
   Kansas, and Florida Gulf Coast University submitted a scientific
   article skeptical of the initial reports of rediscovery. However, after
   reviewing new sound recordings from the White River of Arkansas
   supplied to them by the Cornell team that reported the rediscovery,
   they announced in August 2005 that they had concluded that the bird has
   indeed been rediscovered and withdrew their paper. Yale ornithologist
   Richard Prum stated:

     "We were very skeptical of the first published reports, and thought
     that the previous data were not sufficient to support this startling
     conclusion. But the thrilling new sound recordings provide clear and
     convincing evidence that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is not extinct.

   In August 2005, despite the arguments for the existence of at least one
   Ivory-billed Woodpecker, questions about the evidence remained. Cornell
   could not say with absolute certainty that the sounds recorded in
   Arkansas were made by Ivory-bills.

   Some skeptics, including Richard Prum, believe the video could have
   been of a Pileated Woodpecker.

   In December 2005, Richard Prum's position was presented this way:

     Prum, intrigued by some of the recordings taken in Arkansas' Big
     Woods, said the evidence thus far is refutable.

   On page 13 of the American Birding Association publication "Winging It"
   (Nov/Dec 2005), it was announced:

     The ABA Checklist Committee has not changed the status of the
     Ivory-billed Woodpecker from Code 6 (EXTINCT) to another level that
     would reflect a small surviving population. The Committee is waiting
     for unequivocal proof that the species still exists.

   In a commentary published in The Auk in January 2006, Jerome Jackson
   expressed hus skepticism of the Ivory-bill evidence in no uncertain
   terms:

     Prum, Robbins, Brett Benz, and I remain steadfast in our belief that
     the bird in the Luneau video is a normal Pileated Woodpecker. Others
     have independently come to the same conclusion, and publication of
     independent analyses may be forthcoming [...] For scientists to
     label sight reports and questionable photographs as 'proof' of such
     an extraordinary record is delving into 'faith-based' ornithology
     and doing a disservice to science." (Jackson, 2006a),

   sparking off a side debate coming close to personal accusation
   (Fitzpatrick et al., 2006b,c; Jackson, 2006b).

   In March of 2006, a research team headed by David A. Sibley of Concord,
   MA published findings in the journal Science, saying that the videotape
   was most likely of a Pileated woodpecker, with mistakes having been
   made in the interpretation of its posture. They conclude that it lacks
   certain features of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and has others
   consistent with the Pileated (Sibley at al., 2006) The original Cornell
   research team stood by their original findings in a response article in
   the same issue of Science, stating:

     Claims that the bird in the Luneau video is a normal pileated
     woodpecker are based on misrepresentations of a pileated's underwing
     pattern, interpretation of video artifacts as plumage pattern, and
     inaccurate models of takeoff and flight behavior. These claims are
     contradicted by experimental data and fail to explain evidence in
     the Luneau video of white dorsal plumage, distinctive flight
     behaviour, and a perched woodpecker with white upper parts."
     (Fitzpatrick et al., 2006a)

   In May of 2006, it was announced that a large search effort led by the
   Cornell team had been suspended for the season with only a handful of
   unconfirmed, fleeting sightings to report. Apparently conservation
   officers plan to allow the public back into areas of the Cache River
   National Wildlife Refuge that had been restricted upon the initial
   reported sightings. The search team reportedly plans to resume the
   search in autumn after the leaves fall, although at a somewhat smaller
   scale and possibly focusing on the White River region.

2005/2006 Florida reports

   In September 2006, new claims that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker may not
   be extinct were released by a research group consisting of members from
   Auburn University in Alabama and the University of Windsor in Ontario.
   Dr. Geoff Hill of Auburn University and Dr. Daniel Mennill of the
   University of Windsor have revealed a collection of evidence that the
   birds may still exist in the cypress swamps of the Florida panhandle.
   Their evidence includes 14 sightings of the birds and 300 recordings of
   sounds that can be attributed to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, but also
   includes tell-tale foraging signs and appropriately sized tree nest
   cavities (Hill et al., 2006). This evidence remains inconclusive as it
   excludes the photographic or DNA evidence that many experts cite as
   necessary before the presence of the species can be confirmed. While
   Dr. Hill and Dr. Mennill are themselves convinced of the bird's
   existence in Florida, they are quick to acknowledge that they have not
   yet conclusively proven the species' existence. The research team will
   undertake a more complete survey of the Choctawhatchee River in the
   coming winter season in hopes of obtaining photographic evidence of the
   bird's existence.

Tourism

   In economically struggling east Arkansas, the speculation of a possible
   return of the Ivory-bill has served as a great source of economic
   exploitation, with tourist spending up 30%, primarily in and around the
   city of Brinkley, Arkansas. A woodpecker "festival", a woodpecker
   hairstyle (a sort of mohawk with red, white, and black dye), and an
   "Ivory-bill Burger" have been featured locally. The lack of confirmed
   proof of the bird's existence, and the extremely small chance of
   actually seeing the bird even if it does exist (especially since the
   exact locations of the reported sightings are still guarded), have
   prevented the explosion in tourism some locals had anticipated.

   Brinkley, Arkansas, hosted "The Call of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker
   Celebration" in February 2006. The celebration included exhibits,
   birding tours, educational presentations, a vendor market, and more.

Other facts

   The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is sometimes referred to as the Grail Bird
   or the Lord God Bird (while the Pileated Woodpecker is known as the
   Good God Bird). National Public Radio interviews concerning the
   rediscovery of the species were conducted with residents of Brinkley,
   Arkansas, and then shared with musician Sufjan Stevens who used the
   material to write a song titled "The Great God Bird". Arkansas has made
   license plates featuring a graphic of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory-billed_Woodpecker"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
