Brown and Sanders 1966

Geoff Hill has posted interesting information here that sheds additional light on an August 1966 report of a pair of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers near the Yellow River on Eglin Air Force Base, Okaloosa County, Florida. I spoke with Bedford Brown in April 2007, and his personal recollection of his and Jeffrey Sanders' sighting was as compelling as any I have heard.

IBWO Draft Recovery Plan Released Today

http://www.fws.gov/ivorybill/IBWDraftRecoveryPlan.pdf

Addition:

Although the title page is dated August 2007, it appears to end with Arkansas in early 2006, and conspicuously absent is any mention of the sightings/searching in the Choctawhatchee bottomlands. The area is not even included in the list of priority search areas for Florida. This is not a snub of the Auburn/Windsor effort (first announced less than a year ago), but an indication that the release of this document has been on hold for some time without the editing necessary to keep it current. Another example: In several places the plan mentions events that "will happen" in 2006.

Note the year of publication given for the suggested citation:

U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2006. Recovery Plan for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis). U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Atlanta, Georgia.

Historic Ivory-billed and Other Campephilus Recordings

The right-hand sidebar has a new addition: links to several of Cornell's Macauley Laboratory of Natural Sounds recordings of Campephilus woodpecker recordings, including the Ivory-billed (C. principalis, with 10.5 minutes of vocalizations and tapping, but unfortunately no double knocks), and the Powerful (C. pollens), Robust (C. robustus), Red-necked (C. rubricollis), and Pale-billed (C. guatemalensis). These four neotropical recordings each include the typical double knock of the genus.

The recordings of both C. pollens and C. robustus were made by Ted Parker III. At the time of his untimely death at age 40 in an Ecuador plane crash in 1993, Parker had made more than 15,000 recordings of over 1,600 species of birds, and was widely recognized as the greatest authority of all time on the natural history of neotropical birds.

Belated Thanks

Our ivorybill search this past winter and spring was an unforgettable experience, mixed with excitement, terror (yeah, a couple of times), and some disappointment, and I consider myself very fortunate to have been involved. Among some unfinished business is a public acknowledgment of gratitude to the people who devoted their personal finances, time, and energy to the volunteer portion of Auburn's Choctawhatchee search based at Nokuse Plantation between December 2006 and May 2007.

First I thank MC Davis for the use of the excellent Nokuse facility, without which we would have been horribly handicapped. Nokuse staff Matt Aresco and Margaret Gunzburger were tremendously supportive with logistics, field searching, the use of Matt's personal motorboat, GIS and map assistance, and general moral support, and I greatly value their friendship.

Mike Martin wins the volunteer of the year award for his many contributions, including his indispensible GIS expertise. Honorable mention goes to Richard Martin (no relation), Eric Soehren, Bill Summerour, Keith Collins, Bob Reid, Brian Monk, Nonie Maines, Robert Jones, Mark Hopey, Lynn Brandon, Bill Finch, and John Jensen. Several others, whom I hesitate to mention for fear of leaving someone out, volunteered smaller amounts of time.

Thanks also to the Auburn U./U. of Windsor guys: Geoff Hill, Dan Mennill, Brian Rolek, Rusty Ligon, Justyn Stahl, and Karan Odom for treating our ragtag group as "equals" in the search.

Last but certainly not least I thank my wife Karan (a different Karan, but spelled the same) and my four-year-old daughter Ava, who put up with Daddy looking for woodpeckers for days at a stretch.

Obviously this blog has been poorly tended of late as I have been swamped with non-ivorybill fieldwork, and it may not be maintained very frequently for the next few months. I have not posted a summary of the season, and if I do it will not be released until Geoff Hill posts his later this summer.

Bad News for SREL

Here.

Savannah River Ecology Lab ACTION ALERT

Off-topic, but if you don't know about the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory’s (SREL) funding crisis, read this May 19 AP article. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) plans to cease funding SREL by the end of next week (May 31). This will result in the closure of SREL unless something can be done to restore this funding. The DOE or its equivalent has supported SREL for ecological research and environmental education for 56 years. I have friends there, all top-notch scientists, who stand to lose their jobs. But the loss to the country would be a far greater tragedy.

On May 22 former President Jimmy Carter wrote a letter to Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, urging the creation of an enduring institution at SREL.

More information is available at www.savesrel.org. Below is an action alert posted there today. Please take some time to familiarize yourself with this important issue, and follow through by contacting the proper individuals (contact info provided below).

ACTION ALERT (Saturday, 26 May 2007):Press coverage of SREL's situation is increasing--see the 22 May story in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Because SREL still has not received any funding promise from DOE, we urge all Friends of SREL to continue to do all you can to ensure that SREL endures.

Please continue to contact your Congressional delegations. If your House representatives are members of the Committee on Science and Technology, please let them know that their investigation of DOE's decision to cut SREL funding is important to you! If you are a resident of Georgia or South Carolina, please thank your senators!

Many SREL Friends have asked why The University of Georgia has been so SILENT regarding SREL. We wonder the same thing. It seems to us that UGA is not just silent, but actively working AGAINST SREL. While we do not understand why this should be the case, it's hard to come to any other conclusion given the lack of any positive action by UGA to help SREL. If you contact UGA officials please ask them WHY they seem to be working against SREL.We finally heard a rather tepid statement by UGA VP for Research David Lee in support of SREL on Thursday, 24 May--the Friends of SREL think it's about time UGA began supporting SREL. Perhaps a more ringing endorsement will soon be forthcoming.

Please continue to contact Erroll B. Davis, Jr., Chancellor, Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia (e-mail: chancellor@usg.edu) and UGA President Adams (presuga@uga.edu), Provost Mace (amace@uga.edu), and V.P. for Research Lee (dclee@uga.edu). Please also continue to contact Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman (e-mail: The.Secretary@hq.doe.gov; phone: 202-586-6210 or 1-800-342-5363). If you place a call or send an e-mail, you might first want to preview our talking points page.

Frankie

I know, it's been a while. My involvement in the volunteer search has dropped off somewhat as other responsibilities, long postponed, have demanded attention. Monitoring Red-cockaded Woodpeckers in Alabama has occupied much of my time lately, and using a pole-mounted video camera I've observed eggs and chicks of several breeding pairs in the past couple of weeks, which has been fun. Needless to say, there has not been much to tell, ivorybill-wise, but I do feel bad about not posting at least something esoteric for a whole month. A couple of days ago my friend Frankie Green told me how tired she was of seeing the April 8 water snake post. So...

Bill Pulliam has posted an amusing reference to a different Frankie over at Notes from Soggy Bottom. It's as good a hypothesis I've seen as to why we have all these sightings and sounds, yet no photo. If you don't get Bill's "Benjy Pecker and Frankie Pecker" reference, Google "Benjy, Frankie, forty-two," or better yet, read lots of Douglas Adams. Thanks, Bill.

More here later. Eventually.

Brown Watersnake

On April 1 Matt Aresco and I had just put our boat ashore on the main channel of the Choctawhatchee when this Brown Watersnake (Nerodia taxispilota) surfaced beside us holding a Brown Bullhead (Ameiurus nebulosus) by the snout. It had apparently just caught the fish in deeper water and was bringing it to shore, and was oblivious to our presence. We watched quietly for 40 minutes as it struggled to swallow the little catfish, which did not put up much resistance other than extending its stiff dorsal and pectoral spines. Once the fish was swallowed, the snake swam off to the shelter of some tree roots to digest what might have been its first meal of the spring.

Words of Wisdom

When I was a young boy in the 1960s-70s, hunting with my father (born 1937) and great-grandfather (born 1897), I often called their attention to deer tracks in the soft ground. I can still hear their response: "That's fine, boy, but you can't eat tracks." I sometimes reflect on those words when I either see or am told of "interesting" feeding sign or really big cavities. An ivorybill indeed might have been the source, and we certainly need to follow up on all possible evidence, but as we've said before here, feeding sign and cavities are Pileated Woodpecker until proven otherwise. Three "good" sound (audio) reports have come from within a 1.5 km radius in our study area: kent-like calls heard on March 6 by Ken Able and an apparent response to Eric Soehren's March 9 simulated double knocking (both detailed here), as well as Mike Martin's heretofore unpublicized Nov. 28 (2006) report of two sets of "dead-on" double knocks. Although these are more intriguing than any feeding sign or large cavity, they too fall short of proof of course. We all know that until someone produces a clear photo or video indisputably showing a living Ivory-billed Woodpecker, all the putative double knocks, kents, feeding sign, mega cavities, and unverified sightings are just fodder for controversy, and there won't be much elaborating on them here.

Larry Chandler, 1951-2007

Wildlife artist Larry Chandler, creator of the familiar "Elusive Ivory" painting of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, passed away last week after a brief illness. I had the pleasure of meeting Larry at Alabama Wildlife Federation events, and I was struck by his passion for conservation. He will be missed by many.

• Huntsville (AL) Times Article
• Decatur (AL) Daily News Article
• Columbus (GA) Ledger-Enquirer Article

An Afternoon with Nancy Tanner

Nancy Tanner in Atlanta, 11 March 2007

Nancy Tanner saw five ivorybills with then-fiance James Tanner at the Singer Tract more than 65 years ago. A few of us took a break from the swamp to attend her delightful Atlanta Audubon Society presentation on March 11. It was a real treat, including great archival motion picture footage and her personal recollections and descriptions of the birds' calls and double knocks. She is hopeful about the Choctawhatchee, and wished us luck. Thank you, Mrs. Tanner, for a wonderful afternoon.