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After arriving home from a very enjoyable 5 days
leave touring New England I read with great pleasure Ian Fraser's whimsy about
the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Then it was off to a meeting of the NYC
Chapter of Audubon to listen to a talk by Phillip Hoose, the author of (inter
alia) "The race to save the Lord God bird" which is all about the
IWB.
As well as listening, looking was involved as he
had film from the 1930s Cornell expedition including the calls of the bird (but
not the double knock) and the 4 seconds from the recent video.
He believes the bird exists in Arkansas but the
evidence is still not cast iron. One of the best questions was how has a
huge black bird remained undetected for 61 years? His suspicion is that
some of the records which were ruled out in the interim as being pileated
'peckers were in fact Ivory-billed.
It was a very good evening which concluded with a
stampede to the book table. I have my copy of the book (signed by the
author) and if he writes as well as he talks it will be an excellent
investment!
Martin
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