October 27 '05

Hi Tweets;

In speeding through the accumulated messages, I remember one requesting info on tree holes made by large woodpeckers to be used for species identification. I notice there isn't as much certainty nowadays as in years past. Anyway, I want to refer to a paperback book that briefly mentioned a tantalizing find in northern Mexico.

Get a hold of Roland H. Wauer's book titled: "A Naturalist's Mexico." And read chapter 4, called 'Maderas del Carmen." Now those mountains, or mountain mass as he refers to them, lie across the border southeast of the Big Bend Nationnal Park. They intercept more rainfall from the Gulf of Mexico than do the Chisos Mountains of Texas.

To make a long story short, he found large oblong holes in trunks 25 feet above the ground. That was in 1969. I won't go further into it than that. But if those holes were made by an Imperial Ivory-bill, that would apparently put them in the Sierra Madre Orientals, by my reconing. Unfortunately, evidence was not subsequently found, according to Wauer.

Phil Hotlen
Bellingham, WA
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