Yamp-Yamp-Yamp: Trip Report, 12/28/18-1/4/19 (Approximately)

Posted: January 10, 2019 | Author: markprojectcoyoteibwo | Filed under: Trip Reports, Updates | Tags: Calls, George Lowery, Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Kent, Louisiana, Singer Tract, single knock, transliteration, yamp | Leave a comment

This trip had its ups and downs, including a couple of possible encounters on New Year’s day (discussed below). Weather and accompanying high water posed major problems. Flooding was unprecedented in my experience, and much of the core search area was inaccessible. With three inches of rain predicted for my last two field days, I cut my stay short and went to New Orleans to avoid possible flooding, catch up on some work, and for a little R&R (and chaos).

There were also technical problems – trouble navigating a new camera and my recording device (a replacement for one lost in the field last trip). I’ve included a few of my own photos, though they are not up to my usual standard for posting. The vast majority are courtesy of Erik Hendrickson.

I was in the field from December 29-January 1, as was Jay Tischendorf. Erik arrived the day before and remained until January 4. We were joined by our newest team members – MW, Louisiana-based photographer, who has been doing great work surveying the area and surroundings, developing a more comprehensive picture than I have been able to manage, and Guy Luneau, who arrived on December 31 and was making his first visit to the search area. Guy is a very accomplished birder with great hearing and a deep knowledge of bird calls, especially those of the southeastern US.

It was unnerving to discover that some upland areas have been marked for logging, down to the very edge of the core search area, and within perhaps fifty yards of the location where the March 2017 recordings were made.

High water was a major obstacle. On New Year’s day, Guy and I wore chest waders, but it became apparent, within about 20 yards after leaving the uplands, that water would be over our heads in some of the sloughs. I’ve never seen conditions like this in the area. Click on an image in the gallery to see them the full-size photos.

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On Saturday, December 29, Jay, Erik, MW and I tried to reach the northern group of trail cams. After entering the bottoms, crossing on the log shown above, we were able to reach the northernmost of the cameras but were unable to go more than about 100 yards beyond it. I’ve reviewed the card; there was no new woodpecker activity and a couple of very brief squirrel visits to the scaled patches. There was no observable change to those surfaces.

On the 30th, seeking higher, dryer ground, we visited an upland area in the floodplain of a small stream. This is a patch I’ve wanted to explore for some time, since our logging history map shows an entry date of 1910. As is the case in areas where pine has been cut, stumps from the pre-chainsaw era were scattered around. The forest is not terribly impressive, probably due to soil conditions. There were few dead and dying hardwoods, but we saw several patches of recently dead and debarked pines.

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MW departed and Guy Luneau joined us on the morning of New Year’s Eve. We tried an alternate route to the unserviced northern cams. This required a much longer traverse of upland areas, including a large parcel marked for cutting (the blue tagging on the trees shown above is one boundary of the area to be logged). Unlike the other plot, where the larger trees are being taken, this appeared to be more of a thinning operation. It is still unnerving, and there seems to have been an uptick in logging operations in areas that I believed to be protected.

When we got to the bottomland, near the location of the March 2017 recordings, we found it completely flooded and were unable to enter, let alone get anywhere near the cameras. Although we’ve been careful to deploy cameras near head height whenever possible, I suspect that we’ve lost several, possibly as many as 6 of our 8 functioning units, to the flooding. Team members will be returning to check on the cameras within the next couple of weeks.

All the excitement took place on New Year’s Day. There had been a little break in the rain, and we hoped to reach the southern cluster of trail cameras. It soon became clear that this would be impossible. In the southern area, the bottom is considerably wider than where the other cameras are deployed. Here too, water reached the edge of the uplands, and the first slough, which can usually be crossed in ankle-high boots, was completely out of its banks, with water crotch deep approximately 20 yards from where the edge should have been. We messed around on the edges of the bottoms for a while, but found no entry points. At a little after ten, we decided to do a double knock series.

As was the case for most of the trip, woodpecker activity was lower than normal, and double knocks were less productive of responses from other species than is usually the case. As a result, I did a fairly aggressive series over a five minute period. About 15 minutes after I finished, Erik and I, who were standing and positioned somewhat closer to the sound, heard a distinct single knock – clearly a blow to a woody substrate and not an industrial sound or gunshot – at an estimated distance of 300 yards. (I said 300 yards or more; Erik said 300.) The sound was isolated and not associated with foraging knocks or other woodpecker drums. Unfortunately, I thought my recorder was running at the time, but such was not the case.

Stymied at this location, we returned to our vehicles to see if we might be able to reach the bottoms by a different route. We were able to do so, and to walk along a higher stream bank, penetrating a mile or so into the core habitat before an uncrossable slough blocked our progress. At around 1:30 pm, we were walking downstream on the bank, when Guy stopped us, having heard some interesting calls. Jay heard them next, a little less well. I was the last in our party to hear them, and they were at the very edge of my hearing.

We attempted some Blue Jay playbacks and also some playbacks of the March 2017 recordings (using an iPhone without external speaker). Neither produced a response. And we noted no Blue Jays calling at the time.

In the discussion that followed, it became clear that two sources were involved. Guy said that, while they did not sound like the Singer Tract kents, they were somewhat similar to the calls we recorded in March 2017 and were unlike any Blue Jay he had ever heard. Jay agreed that they did not sound like a Blue Jay. I thought I noted what I describe as a creaky quality that I associate with Blue Jays, but I heard the calls least well, can’t be sure, and trust Guy’s ear more than my own. Regardless, the descriptions of the calls are what I find most interesting.

On the spot, Jay gave “Yamp-Yamp-Yamp” as a transliteration of the sounds. This transliteration appears in the literature and is rather obscure. While it is mentioned by Steinberg, Jay was unaware of that reference or its source, George Lowery, who used it in his Louisiana Birds, now out-of-print.

More on “Yamp” as a transliteration below. Suffice it to say that the variability among transliterations and descriptions of ivorybill sounds, including but not limited to “kent” and “yamp”, is indicative of a considerably broader range in pitch and duration than the Singer Tract recordings and the strict parameters used by Cornell in Arkansas would suggest.

Guy, too, used a variant of “yamp” to describe the sounds, as shown in these excerpts from his field notes:

The documentation that I wrote down for myself on what we heard on the afternoon of 1/1/19 was “a whining, nasal, rising yaaAMP, yaaAMP, yaaAMP, yaaAMP.”  I think in my renditions on-the-spot I was verbalizing “waaANK, waaANK,…”.  

“Nasal” was my own word, not having remembered (or known) anyone having used the term in days gone by in reference to ivorybill calls. I am curious as to whether any of our forebears have also described a rising inflection in any ivorybill calls. The kents I heard from the Arkansas bird in October 2005 did not have a rising inflection.  They were the sharp single kents and a few double kents (the doubles being HIGH-low) with a tin trumpet quality, distinctly different from what we heard on 1/1/19.

I have never heard before in my life what we heard on that afternoon.  There were no archival matches.  I think you could probably tell by my expression and reaction that I was stumped in North America for the first time in a very very long time. A couple decades, I’d say.

I’m aware of a reference to Lester Short using “yamp” in discussions about the Cuban ivorybill, but as far as I know, the published references all come from Lowery’s Singer Tract observations. Interestingly, Frank used it too, in our first email exchange.

Here are several descriptions from Lowery:

    “The birds were feeding energetically on dead stumps and low trees, and were calling frequently with their peculiar, nasal, rather high-pitched yaamp-yaamp until finally disturbed, after which they retreated to the taller timber and were lost from sight.”

 John S. Campbell, J. J. Kuhn, George H. Lowery Sr., George H. Lowery, Jr., “Bird-Lore’s thirty-fourth Christmas census (Tallulah, La.).” Bird-Lore 36 (1934): 55. 

Through the woods came the loud clear, high-pitched, “yaamp-yaamp,” unmistakably the call notes of the ivory-billed woodpecker.

Its notes are clear and distinct, and yet rather plaintive. They may be heard at a considerable distance, perhaps a half mile, and have been likened to the false high notes of a clarinet or a ten-penny horn. From my experience I would not say that the notes are repeated any definite number of times in succession. As mentioned before, the notes can be described as a monosyllabic “yaamp-yaamp” with a decided nasal twang.

George Lowery, Jr., “The Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Louisiana.” The Proceedings of the Louisiana Academy of Sciences 2, (1935): 84-86.

. . . our ears strained for only one sound – the high-pitched, nasal yamp, yamp, or as some people interpret it, kent, kent of an ivorybill.

(3) a high-pitched nasal call note that may be described as yamp, yamp, yamp instead of a flicker like, deep voiced, cuck, cuck, cuck.

George Lowery, Jr., Louisiana Birds (1955), 415-419.

I don’t think Frank had read Steinberg when he wrote this in fall 2008, and I’m almost certain he was unfamiliar with Lowery’s book, which was long out of print by then. Frank was a musician and had an excellent ear.

Odd you should mention “yank”…Sounded more like “yamp” to me…very first sighting in 93-94 bird made noise like that twice. When told that to ******** LA Natural Heritage Foundation, he said not IBWO and bye now….Have heard similar sounds in HZ…Have some recorded…Will not make you listen unless you ask;-)…

Frank Wiley, October 2008.

I don’t recall what became of those recordings but it’s intriguing that this little-known transliteration has been used more than once to describe sounds heard in Louisiana.

I’ve heard many stories like Frank’s. He was remained annoyed by his treatment over the “93-’94” bird and talked about it often. The incident illustrates how easy it is for local reports to die in desk drawers and how only a limited number of them reach those who keep track of such things. Several years after Frank sent that email, we met the official; he had no memory of the incident.

It’s always encouraging to have possible auditory contacts, which are infrequent but which often seem to come in clusters. Nevertheless, I’ve become somewhat jaded and tend to minimize their importance. Guy and Jay (for whom it was the first possible encounter) were a lot more excited than I, but for my part, I can safely say that I always enter the habitat with some hope but very low expectations. Every possible encounter is a surprise.

Finally, here are some of Erik’s pictures from the trip, and three of mine, including his first Red-cockaded Woodpecker captures.

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