[dts32041]

Would somebody get the Toon out of the bushes.

[MississippyMuddy]

Kewl post :)

Jeff

[yarddog]

I read awhile back that the Carl Zeiss company in Germany had sponsored an expedition to Louisianna because someone had recorded what sounded like the sound of that same bird.

They never found one and decided it was the sound of a .22 rifle. I now wonder if it might have really been one.

[LexBaird]

Oddly enough, North America's biggest peckerwood also hails from Arkansas.

[itsahoot]

Evolution must have decided to just remake them.

[konaice]

This ought to be good for locking up several hundred thousand square miles of wild lands. /sarcasm.....

[Slump Tester]

I hear they taste just like whooping crane.

[speedy]

Thanks for this great posting. I've seen Pileated Woodpeckers, which I think are pretty similar, but this would be cooler still. Time to start looking for the dodo.

[the_daug]

I seen that bird in northern Louisiana hanging with this bird

[BluH2o]

Great news ... the ivory billed woodpecker, if it makes it back from near extinction would be a plus for all Americans. The pilated woodpecker ( a cousin of the ivory billed) is an impressive bird ... however, not nearly as striking as the ivory billed. We had a pilated awhile back who found a hollow tree not far from our home ... it sounded like a jackhammer. Apparently they like hollow trees, not only as a food source, but apparently the god awful racket attracts the opposite sex. Sort of like a teenager cruising down main street in a hotrod without a muffler ... the more noise the better.

[antonia]

Here in Connecticut we had long bee afraid that our native Pileated Woodpeckers had disappeared also. But I can happily report that they have returned with vigor. So vigorous in fact that every spring the males have developed an annoying habit of pecking energetically any metal smoke stack that they can reach, like the one on my house for the oil burner, which the builder had failed to to cover. The stack if covered with dents from the mating rap of Woody.

[Physicist]

Ornithology ping.

[Servant of the 9]

I saw several during the mid 70s in East Texas, long after they were declarted Extinct.
The same naturalists who thought the Aligator 'endangered' made the declaration.

SO9

[tumblindice]

A sapling springs up in the clearing between two enemies, a beech forest and a birch forest. Since I'm making this up as I go along, these talking trees argued vociferously about the parentage: birch or beech?
One day an ivory-billed woodpecker alighted on the little sapling and began pecking. Standing ent-like on tip-roots they asked as one:
"Oh woodpecker (since wp's are experts in all things wood) what is the youngster--a birch or a beech?"
He thought about the question, wiped his beak and replied,
"Gee, I dunno about that, but I'd have to say it's the best piece of ash I've ever had my pecker in." And flew away.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

"More than 60 years after the last confirmed sighting of the species in the United States, a research team today announced that at least one male ivory-bill still survives in vast areas of bottomland swamp forest."

Uh, contrary to the same sex marriage crowd, at least one female ivory-bill also still survives in vast areas of bottomland swamp forest.

[Waterleak]

Wonder what they taste like?

[Finalapproach29er]

"The pussycat swallow tail"

-Remember the Gilligans Island with the bird watcher searching for this thought-to-be-extinct breed?

LOL

[Inyo-Mono]

I doubt that it's real. Probably a man in a feather suit.

[Go Gordon]

What's the bag limit for the ivory-billed woodpecker?

[MirrorField]

ObPrincessBride: Well, there's a big difference between "mostly extinct" and "wholly extinct".