FreeLists / tn-bird / [TN-Bird] Robot Enlisted to Spot Rare Woodpecker

[Greg Williams <k4hsm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Robot Enlisted to Spot Rare Woodpecker
Irene Klotz, Discovery News
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/03/05/CONE_tec.html?category=animals&guid=20070305134500
March 5, 2007 --- Scientists have enlisted the most intrepid of bird 
watchers in an attempt to prove that a majestic woodpecker, believed 
extinct for more than 60 years, still exists.

The sentry is sharp-eyed robot that has been mounted to a power line 
high above the bayou in eastern Arkansas where what is believed to be an 
ivory-billed woodpecker was sighted in 2004.

With cameras that can read a credit card number from across a room and 
software to analyze high-flying objects, the robot has been on the job 
for about four months. So far it has captured video of a flock of geese 
and a blue heron, but scientists are hopeful it will one day image what 
has become the holy grail of bird-watching, the sight of a ivory-billed 
woodpecker.

The bird, which stands nearly 20 inches in length and has a wingspan of 
about 30 inches, was once the largest woodpecker in North America. It 
made its home in the swampy forests of the southeastern United States, 
where beetle larvae, its mainstay food, could be found in abundance in 
dead and dying trees.

With the rise of the timber industry after the Civil War, the forests 
were felled, driving the bird to extinction --- or so it was believed.

In 2004, a lone kayaker in Arkansas' Cache River National Wildlife 
Refuge reported seeing an ivory-billed woodpecker. Wildlife experts with 
Cornell University's Laboratory of Ornithology in New York and The 
Nature Conservancy were able to confirm the sighting. The best evidence 
is a fuzzy videotape of what appears to be an ivory-bill in flight.

Not everyone is convinced, however. Critics says the video, which was 
taken by David Luneau, an associate professor of electronics at the 
University of Arkansas at Little Rock, is of a pileated woodpecker, 
which resembles the ivory-bill.

Researcher Ken Goldberg, with the University of California at Berkeley, 
read about the hunt for the long lost bird and decided he had something 
that could help. Before the 2004 sightings, the last time an 
ivory-billed woodpecker was seen was in the 1940s.

-- 
Greg Williams
K4HSM
k4hsm@xxxxxxxxxxx

http://www.twiar.org
http://www.etskywarn.net



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