I’ve completed reviewing the cards from the deployment discussed in three previous posts. As it turned out, the most dramatic and informative sequence was captured on July 29; it was the last sequence found in the course of the review. To recapitulate: the tree is a hickory, and hickory bark is uniquely tough, tight, and hard […]
The original post from last week is below the updated material. It provides some important background, and I encourage you to read all the way and watch the clips. A couple of prefatory notes for new readers: first, this discussion pertains to hickories only because the bark of trees in the genus Carya has characteristics that […]
I just returned from Louisiana where I visited both the search area and the location of Joseph Saucier’s sighting last year. There were no possible encounters on this trip and just a little of potential significance ivorybill-wise. I plan to post a trip report within in the next week or so and hope to get […]
Best laid plans . . . I’m pushing back the posts on historic range and evidence but hope to get to them soon. In going through some of the remaining unexamined images from past trail cam deployments, Geoffrey McMullan came across an intriguing image. He sent me the file for the entire day without indicating […]
This is my 100th post on the blog. On the weekend of March 4-5, Phil Vanbergen visited the search area and changed out the card on our deployed trail cam. He found that Pileateds had hit the target tree, scaling a single and large strip of bark during one of several visits. The raw sequence […]
Yesterday, Phil Vanbergen visited the search area and found fresh scaling of the kind I think is diagnostic for Ivory-billed Woodpecker on a hickory. This is an exciting development because we found no fresh work of this type last season. While Phil was unable to get to the base of the tree to examine the […]
Introduction: According to Tanner, scaling bark was the Ivory-billed Woodpecker’s primary foraging strategy during breeding season in Louisiana. Tanner wrote that the ivorybill is “capable of easily scaling away heavy bark that other woodpeckers could not loosen.” (Tanner 1942). All woodpeckers in genus Campephilus have specific anatomical characteristics that enable them to forage in this […]
Thanks again to all who sent condolences, and appreciations of Frank Wiley and our work. Your sympathy and support have comforted and encouraged me during this difficult time. Part 1 is here. This post supplements the analysis at: Feeding Sign: Some Possible Ivorybill Diagnostics. I’ll be reiterating ideas that are familiar to longtime readers; I have posted […]
Part 1 of this report is here. Patricia opted to take the day off on the 19th, so I went out on my own and covered a lot of territory. I had been thinking hard about the hickories and the fact that, in virtually all cases, we’ve seen indications that bark is removed from these […]
I’ve created a page that expands on this post and should provide a good introduction to our thinking about the three most intriguing types of feeding sign, with images from the second and third categories. Think of this post as the shorter version. Over the years, I have written a great deal about bark scaling […]
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