The Lord God Bird

Reported today in the online edition of the journal Science (the international science magazine so prestigious, it only has one name):

Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) Persists in Continental North America Abstract: The ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), long suspected to be extinct, has been rediscovered in the "Big Woods" region of eastern Arkansas. Visual encounters during 2004 and 2005, and analysis of a video clip from April 2004, confirm the existence of at least one male. Acoustic signatures consistent with Campephilus display-drums also have been heard from the region. Extensive efforts to locate birds away from the primary site remain unsuccessful, but potential habitat for a thinly distributed source population is vast (over 220,000 ha).

The ivory-billed woodpecker was sometimes known as "The Lord God Bird", because (it's said) early Southerners would exclaim, "Lord God!" when they saw one. Something to see. The video of the Lord God Bird is available from the supplemental materials page to the Science article. I shan't direct link to it, because I suspect the AAAS's website will be slashdotted shortly by anxious amateur ornithologists. I've seen it, and yeah, that's a big damn bird all right. More trained observers had this to say:

Of at least 15 reported visual encounters between 11 February 2004 and 14 February 2005, seven contained sufficient detail for the authors to treat them as authentic. In addition to the two February 2004 sightings described above, these were: 5 April 2004 (James M. Fitzpatrick saw overflight along a lake edge; with naked eye at 100 m he noted large size, broad white trailing edges of wings, and steady "loon-like" flight of otherwise black woodpecker); 10 April 2004 (Melinda LaBranche saw overflight at site of 5 April sighting; through 10-power binoculars at 100 m she observed broad white trailing edges of wings and narrow red crescent on rear of folded crest); 11 April 2004 (Melanie Driscoll watched a large woodpecker fly across a 50-m gap in the forest where she was stationed, and through 10-power binoculars at 120 m she saw broad white trailing edge of wings, white line extending from wings up the long neck, and small flash of red on crest, with head otherwise black); 9 June 2004 (Harrison saw a large woodpecker flush from near the base of a bald-cypress, Taxodium distichum, about 15 m in front of him, and with naked eye he noted broad white trailing edges to wings, especially visible as the bird swooped upward to land; 14 February 2005 (Casey Taylor heard double-rap display drums for 30 min near power-line cut and then saw a large black-and-white woodpecker crossing the cut while being mobbed by American crows, Corvus brachyrhynchos. Through 8-power binoculars at 80 to 120 m, she noted broad white trailing edges to wings, long neck with white stripe running its full length, and black head with long bill.)

As I've mentioned before, I'm not the birder of this blog. But I still find this incredible news. (Perhaps the birder of this blog will copy some of his comments from Jim Henley's website and repost them here?)

Comments

[Doug Muir]

I never, never imagined this day would come.

I am very close to weeping.

Doug M.

[Carlos]

There's more on the ivory-billed woodpecker here, at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

I have to say, I haven't been real impressed with the discussion around the primary biology blogosphere -- granted, they're not bird people, who are a breed apart -- but even less so with their commenters, about half of whom have expressed an interest in culinary uses of the IBW, the other half to use this occasion as an excuse to ride their hobbyhorses of creationist/ecologist/whateverist bashing.

Sometimes I fear the maturity of the average Internet poster is around age twelve.

[corporate training company]

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