Summary Evidence collected by Project Coyote in two parts of Louisiana from 2009-2018 should, on its own, suffice to justify maintaining the Ivory-billed Woodpecker’s current listing as an extant, endangered species in the United States. Others may differ, but I think the totality of the evidence does even more, making a compelling case that the […]
Back in the early 2000’s, I often used the holiday break as a time to take off from work and go birding someplace I’d never been before. Following the Ivorybill rediscovery announcement in May 2005, I decided to go to Arkansas “on a lark” and at least see the habitat where the bird had been […]
On October 22nd, I received an email reporting a recent ivorybill sighting in eastern Louisiana. I found the report convincing for its high level of detail and decided to devote my next trip to following up on it. The source was Joseph Tyler Saucier, a pastor, avid hunter, and Louisiana native whom I’ve known virtually […]
I’m reposting an entry from February 2015 with some new commentary as prologue. I recently received a Google alert about a new paper on statistical approaches to extinction relying on sight records. According to the paper, which has not yet been peer reviewed: We have shown that the rate of sightings is the strongest indicator […]
1967 slides taken by Neal Wright of a putative Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Texas are viewable on Vireo (search Ivory-billed Woodpecker), but high resolution scans have not been widely circulated as far as I know. These images were not made public until after the the Arkansas “rediscovery”, more than three decades after they were obtained. Wright’s story […]
My visits to Cornell’s Kroch Library, where the Rare and Manuscript Collections are housed, have been very productive. In addition to the last letter to Tanner pertaining to the Singer Tract ivorybills quoted at length here, I’ve come across several little known ivorybill images, some better quality reproductions of the plates in Tanner, […]
Day 2 – October 10, 2015 We have only visited the southeastern quadrant of our “northern sector” four times. This is mainly due to the amount of time it takes to cross about a mile and-a-half of the uplands surrounding the bottom. Bob and I decided we would try a longer, but possibly quicker and […]
As mentioned in the Part One of this trip report, I was alone in the search area from March 31st to April 2nd. Frank Wiley joined me from April 3rd-5th. He had a very robust, brief sighting on the morning of the 3rd, and we had a possible auditory encounter on the 4th. Conditions changed […]
This post is inspired in large part by an exchange of emails with Chris Sharpe, an ornithologist who is working on an IBWO literature review. Our correspondence revolved around the IUCN’s species account, which describes the ivorybill as “possibly extinct” and cites recent statistical analyses that suggest extinction is likely, as well as one that […]
I have been re-reading George Lamb’s 1957 report on the Cuban Ivory-billed Woodpecker. A number of items struck me as potentially significant for North American searchers, some for how they diverge from Tanner and others for their level of detail. Since this report is likely unfamiliar to many, I thought I’d do a quick post […]
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