[TN-Bird] Re: Fw: [TEXBIRDS] IBWO Implications for Texas - Part 2 now part 1
- From: OLCOOT1@xxxxxxx
- To: KBreault@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2005 15:50:21 EDT
In a message dated 7/9/2005 12:30:11 P.M. Central Standard Time,
KBreault@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
This might be of considerable interest to tn-birders.
Kevin Breault
Brentwood, TN
Williamson County
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I've sent both parts to quite a few interested birders and like Kevin think
that others would be interested and informed by reading part one of Fred
Collins article.
Good Birding!!!
Jeff R. Wilson
OL'COOT / TLBA
Bartlett, TN
Ivory-billed Woodpecker found in Arkansas; implications for Texas
By Fred Collins (c) 2005
The discovery of the single male Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas at the
"Big Woods" has had a phenomenal affect of the local community. You may
have seen the story in your local newspaper about a hairdresser in the
Arkansas community giving kids Ivory-billed styled haircuts complete with a
fire engine red topknot. Local stores and inns have rolled out the red
carpet for birders. The Nature Conservancy and various federal wildlife
agencies have managed to preserve an additional 18,000 acres of bottomland
forest and an endangered species recovery team is being formed.
With the long hot summer, the hunt and hype has been tempered. All of us
that have been involved with this species at one point or another in our
lifetime have looked back on former observations and conclusions. My first
thought when I began this process was: Why has this species been so
controversial? Why have so many experts been so sure the species was
extinct? Why was it that so many people's integrity was so completely
assaulted?
In 1965 I visited New Orleans and nearby areas in Louisiana with my cousin,
aunt and uncle. I saw some of the original Audubon prints and visited an
old plantation house where Audubon stayed and worked for a period. Laying
eyes on his famous Ivory-billed print and seeing some of those great
Louisiana swamps and forest touched a cord in my young mind, which has never
wavered or diminished. I am fascinated by Ivory-billed Woodpeckers and have
always thought that it might just be possible to glimpse one almost
anywhere in east Texas or Louisiana because anything could hide in those
swamps and deep forest, for almost ever. Perhaps the impression of that
naive adolescent was closer to the mark than the experts' opinions.
Years later during my senior year at Texas A&M, I needed a topic for a
technical writing class term research report. What a great excuse to learn
more about the subject of that old Audubon print, the Ivory-billed
Woodpecker. I read the writings of Audubon, Wilson, and Tanner. That's
really the total from first hand observers. Wilson's account made the bird
bigger than life and Audubon's drawing only gave the written word of Wilson
greater reinforcement. Tanner's report was far more detailed and more
modern in ornithological style. I never saw any publication of John Dennis
other than a 1967 Audubon Magazine article, although I got many second hand
reports of his activities, research, and conclusions. I also obtained a
copy of Bessie M. Reed's letter of her observations of Ivory-billed
Woodpeckers from 1901-1956 in Texas and Louisiana. The result of that
semester research paper can be read at the Houston Audubon Website:
http://www.houstonaudubon.org/index.cfm/act/newsletter.cfm/newsletterid/506/
category/News/MenuGro up/Home.htm
I continued to collect information for two to three years following that
effort but after leaving graduate school and beginning a work-a-day world
in Houston, lost touch with the sightings' network. My personal bird
research turned to coastal birds, fish-eating bird surveys, a Laughing Gull
project and banding migratory songbirds during migration. I seldom ventured
into the domain of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and I began to believe the
things I read ............ the Ivory-billed was extinct in the United
States.
Based on my reading, it would appear that among those who have devoted any
substantial effort into researching and searching for Ivory-billed
Woodpeckers, not one had ever come to the conclusion that the bird was
extinct; only that its occurrence confounded documentation. The most recent
published effort regarding Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Texas was by Cliff
Shackelford who carefully documented the specimen records for the state. He
carefully tracked down the records in the existing literature and found
that many of the published records for specimens taken in Texas could no
longer be verified by the actual specimen. His paper in the TOS Bulletin
documents the demise of the species in Texas. However, one might say that
no one has been closer to a Texas Ivorybill than Cliff (he's held the 1904
Bailey Texas specimens in his hand) and while his "scientific paper" might
suggest that he believes the species is extinct, Cliff still follows up
reports to the date of the rediscovery and now with even more determination.
Perhaps the most intensive researcher of our current generation is Jerome
A. Jackson. He was contracted by USFWS and reported to them in July 1989
and revised that report in October 1989. His conclusion was that the bird
should not be declared extinct in 1992 as 'planned" by USFWS to comply with
some regulations related to the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Reading
between the lines suggest that due to the many and continuing environmental
assessments required by the ESA getting the bird declared extinct saved the
department many man-hours and saved developers and others needing a federal
permit for a given project many millions of dollars by not having to
address this super rare species of unknown status. It became politically
expedient to have this species be extinct and to discredit anyone who said
otherwise.
John Dennis who spent a great part of his ornithological career researching
and searching for and observing Ivory-billed Woodpeckers had written a
report stating he thought 6-12 pairs were in Texas in the late 1960s. His
credibility was attacked and he was all but drummed out of ornithological
circles. His motives were questioned since his sightings coincided with
efforts to create the Big Thicket National Park. His sound recordings were
said to be Blue Jay imitations. And a feather Dennis recovered from a
fallen nest hole although identified with 95% assurance by the Smithsonian
as an Ivorybill, was not the 100% he needed. Then too, how old was that nest
hole and feather. He could not provide "hard evidence"; pictures or
specimens. After the mammoth effort to get their poor pictures in Arkansas
we can begin to appreciate how very difficult hard evidence is to come by,
even in our digital age. Let's hope that feather is found in a Smithsonian
file and retested using current DNA technology. Maybe they can then say with
99.99999% assurance that it is an Ivorybill feather. Then using some other
newer technique maybe it can be aged. John Dennis could yet be vindicated.
I can imagine how the Arkansas group felt when they not only saw the bird
but also then took others to the area, and they too saw it. They knew that
their reports would be greeted with the same skepticism normally reserved
for UFO sightings, keeping the "secret", kept them from ridicule and
persecution. During the last 25 years it has been far easier to write-off
sightings that would have been good enough to follow up had the same
observer reported what could have been a possible first US record of a
vagrant. Many good birders have had 'troubling" experiences that they tried
to put out of their mind only to have them rush back into their daily
thoughts now that the Arkansas discovery is public knowledge. Stories
almost forgotten are being retold. Potential sightings actually abound.
Already it has become clear to me that "good" sighting are occurring in
Texas and Louisiana at least every five years, just as they had from 1930
something through the early 1970s when I dropped out of the network. The
birds are likely being seen annually by turkey and deer hunters, trappers,
trotline fishermen and others wilderness wildlife observers. Birders who
normally stick close to roads and boardwalks and seldom sit still in likely
habitat for hours on end are actually among the least likely to see this
shy denizen of the deep forest and swamps.
The Ivory-bill is a specialized feeder that is likely to have taken up a far
more nomadic life-style than when observed by Wilson, Audubon and even
Tanner in forest that were more contiguous and virgin. The only
quantitative information about habitat use comes from Tanner. He believed
that one pair in the Singer Tract was using six square miles of high quality
habitat. In the same area he found densities of 36 Pileated Woodpecker
pairs and 126 Red-bellied Woodpecker pairs. His point for the comparison
was the very high quality of the habitat for all species of woodpeckers. He
also stated that pairs on territory are highly sedentary and stayed well
within the available habitat. The pair he studied intensely stayed within
about a four mile square during most of the year and even closer to the
nest during nesting periods. They were also easily located though hard to
keep up with as they moved through the forest because pairs and family
groups called to one another to stay in contact. He made no comment about
the vocal attributes of single foraging birds. He commented though too
about pairs disappearing from the tract, which he thought were not
mortality related, but were nomadic or dispersal related. He also commented
on the known behavior of woodpecker pairs that are normally sedentary to
disperse to areas with a better or disaster-related food supply.
Woodpeckers are well known as vagrants, even non-migratory species. He
commented on the strong manner of Ivory-billed flight and listed a number
of observations that he ascribed to a nomadic life-style for the species.
Fred Collins
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