Three bits of ivory-billed news. The Auburn team has finally added to
its Web site covering the search for ivory-bills in the panhandle of
Florida. Nothing new, except for the promising news that they expect
conclusive photos may well come from their new remote sensing camera
system. Read about it at
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/science_math/cosam/departments/biology/faculty/webpages/hill/ivorybill/Updates.html
        Also, I've been studying a largely ignored ornithologist who worked
here in Columbus 1866-1897, Theodore Jasper. In his ambitious work
"Birds of North America" is a lengthy treatment of the ivory-billed
woodpecker. While he never saw one here in Ohio, he has some interesting
first-person reports from elsewhere that are not widely known.
Selections follow:
"...he is everywhere regarded as a destroyer of trees, [and] his
extermination is eagerly sought...I have seen Indians with their girdles
and the tops of their quivers ornamented alternately with the crests and
the bills of this woodpecker...hundreds of the trees, on which the
Ivory-Bill had been at work, were examined by me, with the conclusion
that neither mischief nor amusement was at the bottom of his
proceedings. I never found a single sound or healthy tree attacked by
him; but close examination proved that he selected trees for stripping
off the bark or excavating the trunks, which were infested with insects
and on the way to rapid decay...They are particularly fond of ripe wild
grapes. I have noticed them, in company with other birds, fluttering
about and hanging on the vines in the manner of the Titmouse...If
winged, he runs for the nearest tree in quick hops, and in almost a
twinkling he is out of reach, climbing spirally around the trunk,
uttering at each leap his "pat, pat, pat," to the top, and there
squatting down under the protection of some branch, and keeping
perfectly silent. If mortally wounded, he clings to the bark of the
tree, and remains hanging there, often for hours after he is quite dead.
When the hunter takes him alive and lays hold of him by the hand, he
tries to use his bill in the best manner he can in his defense, often
inflicting very severe wounds. On such occasions he utters a most
piteous cry, not unlike that of a child."
        Finally, I have read what seems to me the only persuasive first-person
account to date of an ivory-billed woodpecker--a female--in Ohio. This
was discovered by a researcher friend, and as he plans to publish it
along with some interesting speculations about this species' habits I'll
only say it occurred in Miami County in 1804. More later.
Just some notes on our species' interactions with this one...
Bill Whan
Columbus

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