On 2/4/2017 11:16 AM, Bill Whan wrote:
> Last time I looked, there were forty or so posts on the IDFrontiers web
> site over the past two days about photographic and other evidence for
> the continuing presence of living ivory-billed woodpeckers in Louisana
> swamps. Readers may or or may not want to mingle with these crowds...
> http://digest.sialia.com/?rm=one_list;id=175 .
> There seem to be considerable testimony from the old days that this
> species could be found in primeval forests throughout eastern North
> America, including here. It also seems that photographic
> evidence--today's gold standard of verification for living rarities [no
> one's going to collect an IBWP!]--was developed for field observers
> about the time the last of them were extirpated. There is no
> photographic evidence for Ohio that I can find for living IBWP; during
> the period when these birds could still be found here, photographs were
> in their infancy, when a portrait of a human required him or her to sit
> motionless for minutes.
>      There is archaeological evidence however, that seems to confirm its
> presence in Ohio via remains found in Ohio excavations, though some say
> these remnants might have been valuable enough to pre-Columbian
> Americans to be brought back to Ohio from further south. Certainly,
> preserved remains of these birds were impressive enough that prepared
> specimens are kept in at least three Ohio museums--all without details
> about where they were collected.
>      You can find internet references to alleged modern photos on the ID
> Frontiers site and decide for yourself. Look for older Ohio accounts at
> (Hopkins, G. 1804, updated 1862. A Mission to the Indians, from the
> Indian Committee of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, to Fort Wayne in 1804,
> with an appendix compiled in 1862 by Martha E. Tyson T. Eward Zell,
> Philadelphia, also Wetmore 1943b. Evidence for the former occurrence of
> the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Ohio. (Wilson Bulletin 55(1):55), and
> Goslin 1943b 1945. Bird remains from an Indian village site in Ohio.
> (Wilson Bulletin 57(2):131).
> Happy imagining,
> Bill Whan

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