Here's a news release I received from the Sarasota, Florida rare bird alert. There's hope for everything. Maybe we'll finally learn some lessons. Maybe we can find a dusky seaside sparrow next.

Valerie Elliott
Olympia, WA
VElliott at msn.com

Woodpecker 'rediscovery' sets birders all atwitter
Charles Seabrook
Cox News Service

Apr. 27, 2005 07:15 PM

ATLANTA - For nearly 60 years, bird lovers have slogged through the
swampwaters of the Deep South, along the bayous and rivers feeding the Mississippi
River, searching in vain for a spectacular bird long thought to be extinct - the
ivory-billed woodpecker.

In news bound to electrify bird lovers worldwide, scientists are expected to
announce today the "rediscovery" of the ivory-bill in a remote swampy area of
northeast Arkansas known as the Big Woods.

At least one male ivory-bill has been found alive and well in the deep forest
of bottomland hardwoods between Little Rock and Memphis. It is the first
confirmed sighting of the long-sought bird since World War II.

Other ivory-bills are presumed to be living there. For thousands of birding
enthusiasts, the confirmation of a sighting will be a dream come true.

"It's incredible news," said Steve R. Runnels, president of the American
Birding Association. "This is the most exciting ornithological discovery in a
long, long time."

U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton and officials with the Nature
Conservancy, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the
Arkansas Game and Fish Commission are scheduled to make the announcement in
Washington this morning.

The Interior Department touted the event as "the dramatic rediscovery of a
species previously believed extinct."

The on-line edition of Science magazine is expected to publish today a
detailed account of the woodpecker's rediscovery.

As word about the woodpecker leaked out, birder chat lines were buzzing and
calls poured in to birding organizations.

Late Wednesday afternoon, Mary Scott, an Arizona birding enthusiast who has
pursued the ivory-billed woodpecker for years, posted on the Internet an
account of her personal encounter with the bird in Arkansas. She said her sighting
two years ago of the white-striped woodpecker with a crested crown helped spur
scientists and conservation officials to come to Arkansas and confirm that the
bird, indeed, is living there.

"For me, the search for the ivory-billed woodpecker has ended," she said.

The moment she first saw the bird was unforgettable.

"The sight was overwhelming," she recalled. "It was huge, and was hanging
from the trunk of the tree."

She insisted the exact location be kept secret to prevent hordes of
birdwatchers from thundering into the area, eager to add an ivory-bill sighting to
their "life lists" of species they have seen.

Runnels agreed the location should not be revealed. "It would be a nightmare
with all the people trying to see the bird," he said.

Larger than a crow, the ivory-billed woodpecker was - and perhaps still is -
at 20 inches the largest woodpecker in North America. Its call, say those who
have heard it, is a nasal "kent-kent-kent," what some say is like the sound of
a child's tin horn.

The bird once ranged from Texas to North Carolina.

Most experts believe the woodpecker became extinct in the United States
because its habitats of old-growth forest and bottomland swamps were felled for
timber and drained, its rich soils planted in cotton and soybeans or the land
developed. One of the last places the bird had been seen was along the Altamaha
River in Georgia in the 1930s.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducted a futile five-year search in
Georgia and other Southern states in the 1980s. Reliable sightings of a
subspecies of ivory-bill in Cuba were reported in 1986, but information since then has
been sketchy.

In 2002, a research team embarked on a 30-day expedition in the
Louisiana-Mississippi Pearl River Wildlife Management Area, about an hour's drive from New
Orleans, to try to find the woodpecker. The researchers were acting on a
reported sighting by Louisiana State University forestry student David Kulivan in
April 1999. The bird was never tracked down.

Over the years, the ivory-bill's rarity, beauty and the intriguing mystery of
whether it survives have captured the imaginations of bird enthusiasts.

Former President Theodore Roosevelt, who hunted in the Mississippi River
woodlands, once wrote that "the great ivory-billed woodpecker . . . seemed to me
to set off the wilderness of the swamp as much as the beasts of the chase."

Confirming the bird's identity has been complicated by its resemblance to a
close cousin - the pileated woodpecker. The pileated is smaller and its
markings are a bit different.

While perching, the back of a pileated is solid black, while a perched
ivory-bill sports large patches of white in the form of a shield on the lower back.

"It will take a lot to convince me that they have found the ivory-billed
woodpecker," said Gary Lester, head of Louisiana's Natural Heritage Program, who
took part in the 2002 search.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0427woodpecker27-ON.html
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SW Florida bird watching related links that may be of interest:

Manatee Audubon Society
http://www.manateeaudubon.org/
Venice Audubon Society
www.veniceaudubon.org
Caloosa Bird Club (Ft. Myers, FL)
http://www.caloosabirdclub.org/
Peace River Audubon (Charlotte County, Florida)
http://www.peaceriveraudubon.org/
SW Florida Birdline
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SWFLBirdline/

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