Ghost Birds

I just received a copy of Stephen Lyn Bales' excellent book on the story of Jim Tanner's work with the ivory-billed woodpecker. Even better, this was a gift from my friend Mike Martin, who had the author and Nancy Tanner (whom I've also met) inscribe it for me at a book signing in Tennessee (thanks, Mike!). Mike has gotten to know Mrs. Tanner in recent years, and she has followed with considerable interest the ivorybill reports and searches in both Arkansas and Florida. It's been four years now since I was gearing up with Mike, Geoff Hill, and others for a months-long search on the Choctawhatchee, and I plan to get back down there some again this winter. I'm not ready to say I think the birds are still there, but I do want to continue looking.

Stephen has a blog relating specifically to the book here.

RCW Translocation Time Again

Here's what I'll be doing again later this month. This ADCNR video is from the 2007 translocation of 7 endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers from Ft. Benning GA to Enon Plantation near Hurtsboro AL. That was the first time this was ever done on private lands in Alabama, and it's been a huge success. This year we're moving 12. A couple of weeks ago a team of 17 people installed 57 artificial cavity inserts in just a day and a half to get ready for the move.



Without the generosity, support, and conservation ethic of the landowner, Cam Lanier III, obviously this could never happen. Some of the funding is Mr. Lanier's contribution, with the rest in the form of a federal grant through the Alabama Forest Resources Center. Eric Spadgenske (USFWS) is featured, and he's really the brains behind the operation. Also featured is Mark Sasser of ADCNR. I'm in the video, too, but kind of as an "extra" in a couple of scenes. (That's me grabbing the end of the net at the beginning, and installing an insert later on.)

Our National Woodpecker

I'm vacationing with my wife and daughter in Washington DC. Yesterday morning, as we exited the new Capitol Visitor Center and walked south toward Independence Avenue, I heard the familiar cackle of a pileated woodpecker. Tourist camera in hand, I managed to get this (cropped) photo as it flew from a massive post oak.


I then turned about 180 degrees to take this photo, just to put the scene in context.

Now, I don't know how many acres of pileated woodpecker habitat exist on the National Mall, but I've walked most of it, and it's really not that much. It's hard to imagine more than a pair or two living there. I was quite surprised to see the bird, but perhaps I shouldn't have been. The area is basically a park, and there are a lot of old deciduous trees, but it's a very urban "forest," interspersed with museums, monuments, and open spaces. Still, had I been tasked last week with driving 900 miles to obtain evidence of a pileated woodpecker in my first hour of exploring the National Mall, I'd have probably said it couldn't be done.

I suppose there's a list of the birds of the Mall, but I haven't found one. The pileated is listed as "common" in nearby Rock Creek Park, a protected area. I'm fairly certain the presence of such a conspicuous bird at the Mall is already known. But reflecting back on my unsuccessful searches for the larger ivory-billed woodpecker down in Florida's Choctawhatchee, where people I know swear they've seen ivorybills, I wonder how long it would take for a team of experts to confirm my DC pileated sighting. Probably not very long, I'll grant you. If the tables were turned and it was the pileated whose existence was in doubt, would a photo of the same quality and resolution as mine be acceptable as evidence? No. Sadly, no photos or video even as good as this exists for the ivorybill. I remain hopeful, but I'm not nearly as optimistic as I once was.

Woodpecker Season

Red-cockaded Woodpecker (Picoides borealis), Coosa County, Alabama, May 2007.
Photo by M. Bailey

I'm monitoring red-cockaded woodpeckers ("RCWs") for the tenth consecutive season this spring. Last week I found several nests in Coosa County (near Nick Sharp's coral snake discovery) and one in Chilton county, Alabama. Today I'm headed to Bullock County to remove some flying squirrels from cavities the birds need for nesting and roosting. The RCW has been listed as endangered since 1973 primarily due to habitat loss. Historically found from New Jersey to Texas, its range is now greatly restricted, and about 20,000 birds remain in 11 southern states. More than 90 percent are on public lands such as national forests and military reservations, and these populations are for the most part stable or increasing. Most populations on private lands are decreasing due to lack of proper management and isolation from other populations. In Alabama, the formerly widespread RCW survives today only on four National Forest districts, one area near Lake Mitchell north of Montgomery, and one private holding near Hurtsboro. More on RCWs later; time to hit the road...

Ivorybill Photo Hoax

Anybody can do this.

For the past couple of weeks there's been some buzz on certain blogs about a blurry "possible" ivorybill woodpecker color photo taken in 2007 by Steve Sheridan (the image above is not it.) All links to that photo are now down, as far as I can tell. It was supposedly reviewed by a team of 20 experts for 18 months, and apparently nobody concluded (or even seriously suspected?) it was faked. There were elements to it that I thought looked odd, but of course hindsight is 20-20, and I was certainly intrigued, and I really hoped it was legitimate. Well, the cat's out of the bag, and apparently Sheridan has confessed. I hope (OK, even suspect) there are still ivorybills out there, but this kind of behavior from an individual previously regarded as a serious searcher only lessens hopes. An anonymous commenter to a recent Ivorybills LiVE! blog post (before the hoax was revealed) pretty much echoes my feelings on this:

"Perhaps some people enjoyed this exercise, but I found it discouraging. I believe the IBWO is out there because my BS-detector told me to trust some of the strangers who said they saw it. This search has been a big preoccupation of mine for years. However, a developing parallel between this and Bigfoot (which I don't believe exists) is a sub-culture that includes expert ambiguous evidence analysts on the internet with a never-ending supply of ambiguous “evidence” to analyze. It's creepy, and it makes me wonder if I'm really a chump for spending the time, money and energy I have on this search."

Sheridan will forever be remembered by ivorybill buffs as a fraud. The last putative color photo of the bird seriously put forward was taken in Louisiana by Fielding Lewis in 1971, and can be viewed here (.pdf). Lewis was accused by some of faking this photo, but he maintained until his dying day that it was legitimate.

ADDENDUM: Sheridan has apologized here, but the damage is done. Now what will happen if/when someone comes forth with "good" photo evidence? Forget about still photos. Even a National Geographic documentary-quality video of adult ivorybills feeding young at the nest cavity will be doubted by some, because a skilled CGI tech can realistically simulate anything these days. Look at this:

Purple Martin Gourds

I've been meaning for years to put up martin gourds before the birds arrive here in late January, but I never seem to get around to it in time. This year is different. My friend Jamie Hill, founder of the Purple Martin Conservation Association, shipped me some of his specially designed supergourds, and today they're swinging in the breeze down by Gator Pond. I recently learned from the PMCA literature that I didn't need to be in such a rush, as the first arriving birds are not "scouts," as I'd always heard, but migrating adults that are not likely looking for new nesting sites. What I want to attract are the homesteading subadults from last year's crop, which may arrive weeks after the first older martins pass through. So, I'll keep the gourds closed for a while to keep out nest competitors, probably opening them up in mid February or so. More on our success (or failure) later...

Afternoon Birds

I just stepped out to try the digiscope on whatever birds might be around, and found this Red-headed Woodpecker catching the last rays on the shortest day of the year.


Down by the pond were three Pied-billed Grebes.

Pardon?

This makes no sense. A serious wildlife violator convicted of killing bald eagles with Carbofuran in Missouri was among 17 people pardoned by President Bush today. The back story is fuzzy, but I did glean the info below from a Google cache of the Summer 1996 newsletter, The Federal Wildlife Officer. I suspect more will come to light as this is looked into more closely. This was 12 years ago, and according to the article, the rather mild sentence consisted of a $10,000 fine and a 2-year probation that expired in the Clinton administration. So, does the guy get his ten grand back now?

On February 2nd, Leslie Owen Collier of Charlestown [sic], Missouri, pled guilty to two 16 USC counts of taking bald eagles and one Title 7 count of placing a restricted use pesticide contrary to its intended purpose. Collier was sentenced to two years' probation, barred from possessing a firearm during that period, and ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution to FWS.

Collier had deliberately and improperly used Furedan [sic] to bait meat in order to kill animals on the property he was farming. The methods used by Collier were particularly dangerous because they presented a serious threat to many animals other than the intended targets, including humans and household pets. Among the animals killed by Collier's poisoned bait were three bald eagles, a red-tailed hawk, a great horned owl, a opossum, a raccoon and seven coyotes.

Carbofuran is known to be lethal to raptors, and was probably being used by Collier to kill coyotes. A relevant paper from Journal of Wildlife Diseases is here (pdf).

UPDATE: Let the Eagle Soar.

Red-cockaded Woodpecker Translocation

This is my first YouTube upload, so it's far from slick. I also need a better camera (hint to Santa), but I'll try to do more of these. This was last week at Ft. Benning GA and Sehoy Plantation AL. Part of a USFWS Partners for Wildlife grant that is funding the translocation of red-cockaded woodpeckers from public lands (so far Fts. Benning and Stewart) to Sehoy and Enon plantations. This is the only privately owned land in Alabama to ever receive red-cockaded woodpeckers, and it is one of only two known populations on private lands in Alabama. We moved 8 birds last year (with much success) and 8 again this past week. Young birds, a male and a female, are captured from different places at the donor site (they are "strangers") when roosting at dusk, and miles away and well after dark, each is placed in an artificial cavity that was previously installed at a "recruitment cluster" consiting of four cavity trees near each other. A screen is tacked over the entrance to make sure they don't exit early and the birds are released the following morning by pulling a string. With luck, they stick together and form a breeding pair.

One name I failed to include in the end credits is Joe McGlincy, who drove 4 birds from Ft Stewart several hours to our rendezvous in Eufaula, AL. Sorry, Joe; I'll re-do it when I can! Also thanks to Geoff Hill and Eric Soehren for being string pullers. Many others assisted in installation of cavities in September: Eric Spadgenske, Randy Roach, Bob Hastings, Mark Sasser, Jim McHugh, Beau Dudley, Eric Soehren, and probably others I'm forgetting.

EDIT: Upon re-reading, not enough credit is given here to Eric Spadgenske of USFWS without whom none of this would happen. Eric is 90% of the brains and expertise of the Alabama portion of this translocation project; I'm just happy to be involved.

Still Hopeful

Breaking silence (I've been busy, okay?), all I've got here for now is a link to Bill Pulliam's thoughts on the significance of the recent phenomenal discovery of 125,000 lowland gorillas in the Republic of Congo. I have long had a link to Pulliam's "Notes from Soggy Bottom" blog in the blogroll here (see right column), but I credit Cyberthrush for tipping me off to this. I first saw this gorilla news on CNN two nights ago at a Tallahassee motel following a red-cockaded woodpecker meeting. We saw the news on the motel lobby's big-screen TV, and although I didn't come out and say it to the other woodpecker folks present, I did ponder the potential parallels with the IBWO (Google it if you don't know the acronym).

I remain IBWO-hopeful (although "optimistic" might still be a stretch). It could happen.

Bird Banding at the Wehle Center

Eric Soehren logging data for a female Hooded Warbler

Me (sporting new goatee) preparing to release the Hooded Warbler

Back on June 13 I spent some time with my good friend Eric Soehren of ADCNR's State Lands Division Natural Heritage Section, who is running a Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) bird banding station at the Robert G. Wehle Land Conservation Center in Bullock County, Alabama. We opened the ten nets at 5:15 AM, and in the short hour I was there we got a female Hooded Warbler, a pair (male and female in the same net) of Indigo Buntings, a male Yellow-breasted Chat, and a male Common Yellowthroat. These birds all had been in the tropics of Central or South America only a few weeks before, but are now on their breeding grounds. It was quite a treat to see these gems of the forest at such close range. Thanks to Eric for that opportunity.

Male Yellow-breasted Chat

Male Indigo Bunting

Of Ivory-bills, Bigfoot, and Skepticism

Link to the past: my daughter Ava (then 4) with undisputed
ivory-bill eyewitness Nancy Tanner, Atlanta, March 2007

As a skeptic, I don't put much stock in extraordinary claims if the evidence is lacking, be it homeopathic medicine, acupuncture, telepathy, 9/11 conspiracies, Bigfoot, dowsing, "intelligent design" (don't even get me started on Ben Stein's movie), aroma therapy, feng shui, faked moon landings, alien autopsies, or whatever. There's a reason I have a link to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe in the short blogroll here; I never miss a podcast, and I highly recommend it for critical thinking. I don't know--maybe the ivory-billed woodpecker is my Achilles heel of skepticism, because I'm still holding out hope against what some call long odds. I acknowledge that no conclusive evidence exists to show with certainty that the species survived past the 1940s. And I know a skeptic has to be ever diligent about being seduced by something that he would really, really want to be true. For that matter, I think it would be wonderful if Bigfoot actually did exist, and I can understand (to a degree) why the people at BFRO are obsessed with proving it's "out there," but come on, guys, get real. There are no Bigfoot roadkills, bones, DNA, or uncontested photos or film/videos. There is also zero evidence that a large hominid (other than Homo sapiens) has ever existed in the Himalayas, Pacific Northwest, Florida, etc., and virtually every "Bigfoot" photo or video has been shown to be a hoax. So say what you will about David Luneau's controversial 2004 video of a putative ivory-bill, it is what it is, and it's no hoax. Unlike Bigfoot, we have plenty of specimens, and we know the ivory-bill existed within living memory. Just last year I met someone who saw five, and few will argue with her. It is far more conceivable that the ivory-bill is still hanging on in dense southern swamps than that there is a reproducing population of North American giant apes unknown to science.

Ivory-bills in Louisiana, 1935. Arthur A. Allen photo, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology

The answer to the question of when the last ivory-bill died is unknowable, and you can't prove a negative, so we really can't know the species is extinct, at least not at this point. Complicating it all is the presence of another large black and white woodpecker (the pileated) that could have absorbed any number of actual ivory-bill sightings by proficient observers who may have been operating for decades under a false "ivory-bill = extinct" paradigm. "For a second there I could have sworn--naah, it had to be a pileated." If there was no pileated woodpecker, we would by now pretty well know the ivory-bill's fate. I have been closely involved in the Florida search (I blogged from it here), and I know some of the main players quite well. I have also met Gene Sparling and Bobby Harrison (who along with Tim Gallagher reported the 2004 sighting in Arkansas). I have not seen the bird, nor have I personally heard anything that I could attribute to it. But when you talk to these people who claim sightings, you can tell they are convinced. And most of these people are birders with well-honed observational skills, for what it's worth. Geoff Hill's Auburn team has also amassed considerable acoustic evidence that is strongly suggestive that ivory-bills are or were in the Choctawhatchee River swamps of Florida. But until that million dollar photo (or better yet, video) surfaces that convinces everybody, or until I see one myself, I can't count myself among the True Believers.

In a recent interview, renowned ivory-bill expert Dr. Jerry Jackson is quoted as saying, "I think it would be something short of a miracle if it is there," and, "I think that any betting person would have to say it's probably extinct."

Campephilus principalis might indeed be extinct. And it might not. Even a skeptic can be hopeful, and I hope the ivory-bill is still with us. I intend to keep looking. Time will tell.

Six years before Cornell's 2005 ivory-bill "rediscovery" announcement, Julie Zickefoose wrote a wonderful article on her imagined encounter with the ghost bird. Well worth a read.

Scarlet Tanager

This gorgeous male Scarlet Tanager had just flown across the Gulf of Mexico when I photographed it on 19 April at Shell Mound Park on Dauphin Island. It's unusual to get such a good view of this bird of the eastern interior forest, but the spring migration offers such opportunities along the coast.

Snowy Plover

Snowy Plover at nest, west end of Dauphin Island, Alabama, 19 April 2008. Very few nests are known from Alabama for this rare species that needs undisturbed beaches. The day before, someone had walked within inches of this nest, nearly stepping on the camouflaged eggs. Thanks to Dr. Bill Summerour for leading me and Eric Soehren to this spot.