Hi,
Descriptions of birds with abnormally long bills have been around for decades. There are many such reports in the early NA ornithological journals.
The "first and worst" record that I am aware of is the Ivory-billed Woodpecker mentioned earlier here on Tweeters. It was collected by Johannes Gundlach in Cuba in 1843. Both beaks (the maxilla and the mandible) were approx. 17" long but the bird was still foraging, presumably with its 2 parents, when they were all collected. Two of the IBWO books published lately (both Jackson, p. 196 and Hoose, p.15) feature a picture of this bird. The beaks are very similar to the current LB syndrome, especially in that it is only present in the beak and not the claw keratin. I can think of no better reason to determine the cause of the condition than that. What if the current syndrome jumps to a threatened or endangered species of bird and we still do not know what it is or what causes it.
As this thing continues to develop (I now have 120 records of raptors on the west coast), I have been getting more and more reports of long bills in other species of birds. I always pass these along to Colleen Handel, a USGS biologist in Anchorage AK. She has been working on what appears to be the same condition in Black-capped Chickadees. As many of you know, she has documented over 1,200 individuals with long-bills around Anchorage (they are non-migratory) and has been getting more reports from the Fairbanks area lately.
In my case and in Colleens', we are definitely seeing something new. In both species, the long-bill syndrome was not present a decade ago. And in both cases, it resembles an "outbreak" (and I use that term reluctantly) in that unusually high numbers of birds within specific geographic areas are exhibiting symptoms. I have 86 records of long-billed Red-tails from Washington alone over the last 8 years, most of them since 2002.
The problem is that we are getting reports of different bird species from all over the west with the same symptoms.This might simply represent the normal frequency for "naturally occurring" long-billed individuals, as we have seen throughout recent history. But there is no way to tell at this stage. We certainly have more birders now than ever before, we have more cameras, more digiscoping is being done and of course, there is the Internet (like this message) to share all of this information. So is it spreading to other bird species? Or is it birders just focusing on the unique and unusual? I don't think anyone knows at this stage.
Therefore, I believe that it is very important at this time to report all records of long-billed birds so we can quantify the number and locations of each one over time.
Please send any reports to me if you like. I am compiling the hawks and will forward the others on to Colleen.
Thanks in advance,

PS I should also confirm that the cause of the long-billed syndrome remains unknown.

Bud Anderson
Falcon Research Group
Box 248
Bow, WA 98232
(360) 757-1911
bud at frg.org