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 ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]