The ivory-billed woodpecker was once found across the swampy forests of the south-eastern states. Now, sightings of the bird are hotly debated. One team, lead by Nicholas Gotelli at the University of Vermont, studied the historical decline in specimens taken by museums and private collectors. They also looked at areas where bird life has been exhaustively sampled. Dr Gotelli reckons the odds of finding the ivory-billed woodpecker alive are less than 1 in 15,625. Another group, led by Andrew Solow of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, used a different statistical approach, but also concluded that the bird is likely to be extinct. John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and one of the leading figures in the search for the woodpecker, agrees there is a high probability that the bird is gone. But he says that, faced with the evidence of sightings, he felt compelled to search for the bird. He cautions that other birds have been assumed to be extinct, only to be rediscovered later.
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) is or was one of the largest woodpeckers in the world, at roughly 20 inches in length and 30 inches in wingspan. It was native to the virgin forests of the southeastern United States (along with a separate subspecies native to Cuba). The closely related and likewise possibly extinct Imperial Woodpecker (C. imperialis) of western Mexico is, or was, the largest woodpecker. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker feeds mainly on the larvae of wood-boring beetles, but also eats seeds, fruit, and other insects. The bird uses its enormous white bill to hammer, wedge, and peel the bark off dead trees to find the insects.
Sources:
The Economist, Oct 15th 2011
http://www.economist.com/node/21532341
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory-billed_Woodpecker
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