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November 15 '05

More tidbits for arm-chair IMWO chasers;

I've seen stuffed Imperial Woodpeckers in the natural history museums of Germany and Austria. Mostly they looked kind of moth-eaten. The immatures are said to be a duller brownish black, and that is what most of those looked like. I suspect the shiny black adult specimens are in the private homes and offices of the well connected. The Austrian specimens most likely were acquired during Maximillian's short reign in Mexico.

If Maximillian, the arch duke of Austria who was named emperor of Mexico in 1864, could have managed to save his skin and his throne, I suspect there would have been more order, as far as preserving the (formerly) magnificent avifauna in Mexico. There would have been preserves and parks established before the near-exstinctions occurred, I'm certain. But I'm probably biased from being one-quarter Austrian myself.

The noticeable lack of whiite neck stripes, and the somewhat narrower white back stripes on the Imperial Woodpecker may have got that way through selection by predation, in my opinion. The large subspecies of Goshawk found along the crest of the Sierra Madre Occidental could have been the agent responsible. Most of the other Campephilus woodpeckers retain the conspicuous white neck stripes. Well, it's just a thought. The Black (Dryocopus Martius) Woodpecker of the Taiga belt across Eurasia may have been selected for darkness for the same reason(?).

In my first message about the Imperial Woodpecker, I made a geographical mistake. The railroad line ends in Sinoloa (Los Mochis), not in Sonora. I should have consulted the map first.

Well, happpy winter birding!

Phil Hotlen
Bellingham, WA
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