I’m personally indebted to David Martin (AKA Fangsheath). Not only was Dave a mentor during my early years as a searcher, Project Principalis would not exist without him. He was familiar with our study site and directed Frank Wiley to it as a promising place to search. Frank had a sighting soon thereafter. That sighting […]
Wishing everyone happy holidays and the best for 2019. While the blog has been quiet for a couple of months, the effort continues. A number of items are in the works, and I hope to have news about them in the coming months. And of course, I hope to be able to report on new […]
If you’ve been following this series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5) you know it has focused primarily on preconceptions about ivorybill range and habitat types and how the actual record paints a very different picture from what many of us think we know about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. As I noted in […]
I intended this long-delayed installment in the “Bits and Pieces” series to be the year’s final post. I also intended it to the be final installment in the series. While this may end up as the last post for 2017, I’ve decided to cut this short and save some discussion for what I anticipate will […]
Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. It looks like this series will end up being a five-parter. Part 4 should follow later this week and Part 5 sometime thereafter. Most of us with an interest in the ivorybill have internalized a set of beliefs about what constitutes “suitable” habitat. To a large extent […]
I’ve just finished reading Tanner’s dissertation and have gained some new insights into topics that have been discussed in a number of earlier posts. Conventional wisdom, following Tanner, holds that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker’s decline and possible extinction were caused by habitat loss, specifically the logging of old growth forests during the 19th and early 20th […]
I flew into Houston on February 4 and arrived at the search area on the morning of the 5th. Frank’s work schedule had precluded him from returning to the search area during my absence, and he was unable to get time off to join me this trip. Tommy Michot visited on the February 5th; we […]
Update: This post includes hard data about the extent of old growth in the Singer Tract (scroll down past all photographs) and in ivorybill home ranges. The general points made below remain valid, although some of the wording is perhaps too strong; Tanner overestimated the amount of old growth in the Tract ( at “over […]
I recently gave a talk to the Rockland County Audubon Society, and a member raised what I think is the strongest question about our evidence and about the persistence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in general. “How could the species have survived in such low numbers and at such low densities?” In other posts, we’ve pointed […]
Jamie Hill, who has worked with the Cornell and Auburn teams, recently posted a Facebook link to a very interesting article from the September 2014 issue of Smithsonian. Ivory-billed Woodpecker aside, the piece is well worth reading, but for the purposes of this blog, the article got me thinking about reasons for the ivorybill’s decline and […]
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