At 01:12 AM 1/15/99 -0800, Mark Egger wrote:
>As one who has done some recent backcountry travel in Chihuahua & Durango,
>the "former" haunts of the Ivory-billed, I must say that there is a LOT of
>habitat out in those mountains that is very far from completely surveyed
>for anything biological.

Of course. Not in the US, though. Our lands are quite thoroughly surveyed.
Even the areas you mention are far from unsurveyed.

Unfortunately, large woodpeckers are usually pretty easy to spot. They're
noisy, they're diurnal, they pound wood (leaving sign), they pound wood
(making noise), they chatter, they ... well, I did mention they're big,
didn't I? And Mexicans aren't as ignorant as your post presumes. In my
raptor research, most of our band returns are from Mexican dirt farmers
(dirt-poor, dirt-roads, dirt-mule trails, etc) who take the time, amazingly
enough, to write the USF&W Banding Lab with a band number and information
on the recovery ("it went after my chickens. I shot it").

>I think it is at least
>vaguely possible that these birds may yet hide out in a remote sector of
>the Sierra Madres. On the other hand, hungry people with guns are quite
>common in that area -- a fact that may present as big a threat to any
>potential survivors as habitat destruction.

Hunting so rarely is a cause of extinction or even trouble for species
that I HIGHLY doubt this. And woodpeckers, while dimensionally large,
aren't particularly heavy. There's a reason why humans traditionally
hunt waterfowl and gallinaceous birds (big breast meat). Yeah, everything's
been eaten by some culture or another, but I've never heard of woodpeckers
being a sustained target.

All of these arguments seem to presume one thing:

That ornithologists studying or looking for these birds are ignorant,
while unqualified random posters to tweeters are endowed with some
form of divinely-inspired knowledge which is bound to make fools of
the specialists.

Sorry...



- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net