Free Republic

The Yellow-crested Helmetshrike was ready for what might be its first-ever closeup - Matt Brady, University of Texas at El Paso ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ No-one has seen the Yellow-crested Helmetshrike for about 20 years. That changed when researchers embarked on a six-week expedition in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and captured the dramatic-looking yellow-topped bird in its first-known photo. With nearly 70% of the planet's wildlife populations having declined since the 1970s, there are not often stories worth cheering for when it comes to global animal welfare. But a new find in the remote Itombwe Massif in the Congo is certainly...

By commissioning expensive and inefficient wind and solar electric generating facilities, India may have dug the grave of its own efforts to save the critically endangered great Indian bustard. Erected to avert a faux climate crisis, the so-called renewable machines and their attendant transmission lines are helping to drive one of Earth’s largest flying birds to the brink of extinction. Avian aficionados such as myself have long bemoaned prioritizing wind and solar technologies at the expense of endangered species. Yet, the relentless push for needless climate solutions seems to ignore this as “green energy” installations and avian fatalities increase in...

The American Ornithological Society says it will alter the names of North American birds named after humans, starting with up to 80 of them After two years of discussion and debate, the nation’s premier birding organization has decided that birds should not have human names. The American Ornithological Society announced Wednesday that it will remove names given to North American birds in honor of people and replace them with monikers that better describe their plumage and other characteristics. The group said it will prioritize birds whose names trace to enslavers, white supremacists and robbers of Indigenous graves. Among them is...

In Texas, a man claims to see the mysterious black-and-white woodpecker a few times a week on his land near an airport in Longview. A woman in North Carolina says one regularly visits bird feeders at her home. Another insists she encountered it nearly 20 years ago in Florida. “I KNOW what I saw, and I’m thrilled to have seen him,” she wrote in July to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The federal agency isn’t entirely convinced. In late 2021, the U.S. government sparked a fierce flap in ornithological circles when it said the ivory-billed woodpecker—a majestic bird with...

A small band of searchers rousts itself each morning from a secret camp deep in the woods of a forgotten northwest Florida swamp. They have endured freezing nights, foul drinking water, long stints without showers and an outhouse with only one wall, all in a search for a ghostly creature that may not even exist. They are on a quest to find and photograph an ivory-billed woodpecker to show the world the bird is not extinct. They have invited me along for a two-day glimpse into a mission that is as inspiring as it is mundane. In the past few...

Birders excited about woodpecker sightings Tuesday, September 26, 2006 By BILL FINCH Environment Editor Auburn University researchers published evidence today of what some are describing as an ivory-bill woodpecker "Shangri-La" in the Florida Panhandle, a couple of hours east of Mobile. Researchers said they've had 13 sightings of the ivory bill, long thought to be extinct, and have recorded some 300 distinctive calls and sounds associated with the giant woodpecker, the largest in the United States and a virtual Holy Grail for many birders. The last clear photographs of the bird -- and uncontested proof of its existence -- date...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - A federal judge halted a $320 million irrigation project Thursday for fear it could disturb the habitat of a woodpecker that may or may not be extinct. The dispute involves the ivory-billed woodpecker. The last confirmed sighting of the bird in North America was in 1944, and scientists had thought the species was extinct until 2004, when a kayaker claimed to have spotted one in the area. But scientists have been unable to confirm the sighting. Still, U.S. District Judge William R. Wilson said that for purposes of the lawsuit brought by environmental groups, he had...

Doubts cast on superstar woodpecker's return 12:36 13 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Bob Holmes The apparent rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker in 2005 – hailed as one of the great conservation triumphs of recent times – may be merely a case of mistaken identity, according to a new study. In April 2005, researchers led by John Fitzpatrick at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York, announced in the journal Science that the woodpecker, believed extinct for 60 years, had been seen alive in the swamps of eastern Arkansas, US. And they had a video of the bird...

As reported around the world, the ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), last known to exist in 1944, was sighted in eastern Arkansas in 2004. The sighting prompted a massive (and secret) follow-up search in 2005 of a sixteen-square-mile area of Arkansas forest. When the bird was confirmed to exist, the discovery spawned international headlines, an article in the journal Science, and a book titled The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. While the search for additional evidence of the woodpecker continues, the investigation is instructive for what it did not find: the alleged and elusive Bigfoot. The...

BRINKLEY, Ark. - Each morning, Sara Barker wakes before dawn, covers herself with camouflage and makes sure she has her compass before heading into the eastern Arkansas swamps. Her quest: the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker. Dozens of birders have flocked to the wildlife refuges of the Arkansas Delta to follow up on a kayaker's 2004 sighting of a bird so rare it was thought to have become extinct. They hope to obtain a clear video or picture of the bird and then study its behavior. Barker and fellow scientists from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology plan to comb thousands of acres...

Bird in question was thought to be extinct Three biologists are questioning the evidence used by a team of bird experts who made the electrifying claim in April that they had sighted an ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird presumed to have vanished from the United States more than 60 years ago, in the swampy forests of southeastern Arkansas. If the challenge holds up, it would not only undermine a scientific triumph -- the rediscovery of a resplendent bird that had been exhaustively sought for years -- but also significant new conservation expenditures in the region. The paper questioning the discovery has...

BILLINGS, Mont. — Death’s come knocking a last time for the splendid ivory-billed woodpecker and 22 more birds, fish and other species: The U.S. government on Wednesday declared them extinct. It’s a rare move for wildlife officials to give up hope on a plant or animal, but government scientists say they’ve exhausted to find these 23. And they warn climate change, on top of other pressures, could make such disappearances more common as a warming planet adds to the dangers facing imperiled plants and wildlife. The factors behind the disappearances vary — too much development, water pollution, logging, competition from...

Dr. Michael Collins, Naval Research Laboratory scientist and bird watcher, has published an article titled "Putative audio recordings of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis)" which appears in the March issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. The audio recordings were captured in two videos of birds with characteristics consistent with the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. This footage was obtained near the Pearl River in Louisiana, where there is a history of unconfirmed reports of this species. During five years of fieldwork, Collins had ten sightings and also heard the characteristic "kent" calls of this species on two occasions. Scientists...

The art in question is part of a series discovered at the Amarna site on the east bank of the Nile, in modern day Minya. Excavations conducted in 1924 revealed a palace featuring several lavishly decorated rooms that include numerous plaster panels illustrated with natural scenes in stunning detail...Here the team looked at artwork in what's known as the Green Room, a place most likely used for rest and relaxation, if not occasional socializing and music playing.Some birds, including the pigeons and kingfishers, had already been identified, but the researchers were able to expand on the catalogue of known animals...

This healthy, 1-year-old male offspring of a rose-breasted grosbeak and scarlet tanager is the first-ever documented hybrid of its kind. The two species have such divergent nesting preferences that they have been on independent evolutionary trajectories for at least 10 million years—until now. Credit: Stephen Gosser In June of 2020, Stephen Gosser, a self-described "diehard birder," was out in the woods of Western Pennsylvania when he thought he heard the song of the elusive and strikingly beautiful scarlet tanager. The blood-red bird with black wings and tail is a favorite among birders for both its beauty and rarity, as the...

Everything is racist. First, they came for the dogs What to do if your dog seems racist — Quartz Can Dogs Be Racist? | Psychology Today Can Dogs be Racist? The Colonial Legacies of Racialized Dogs in Kenya and Zambia Ask Amy: I think their dog is racist And then the cats Is 'The Cat in the Hat' Racist? - Education Week Now we find out that racism is for the birds The Racist Legacy Many Birds Carry - Washington Post This is more in the way of statue demolitions and galaxy renamings because some birds were named by or...

The Post ran an expansive report on Thursday, titled "The racist legacy many birds carry," focused on the "birding community," which apparently is having a difficult debate "about the names of species connected to enslavers, supremacists and grave robbers." "Corina Newsome is a Black ornithologist, as rare as some of the birds she studies," Post environmental justice reporter Darryl Fears began his piece, noting she was hired to "break down barriers" at the Georgia Audubon nature preserve.

HUNDREDS of birds found dead on a street in Rome on New Year's Eve were scared to death by fireworks, animal rights campaigners have claimed. It comes after a ban on fireworks in the city, introduced to protect people, animals, and heritage sites, went largely ignored.... ...The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says that there is "little evidence to suggest that fireworks harm wild birds or affect their conservation status".

Stephen Maciejewski dropped to a knee on a Center City sidewalk Wednesday morning and gently scooped up a yellow-billed cuckoo that had smashed into a skyscraper and died on its way to Central America or the West Indies. “This probably happened yesterday,” said Maciejewski, a 71-year-old retired social worker and volunteer for Audubon Pennsylvania. He labeled a plastic bag with the time, date, and location, tucked the slim migrator into it, and continued his rounds. Maciejewski gets emotional when he speaks about all the birds he finds, but nothing, he says, prepared him for what happened Friday. “So many birds...

You’ve probably seen this viral video circulating on Twitter. The camera pans up through a hole in the ceiling to reveal ... creatures of some kind. Are they aliens? Ghosts? No. They're owls. Really, really creepy owls. If you’re not entirely convinced that the hissing trio are indeed birds, you’re not alone. (I showed the video to one friend, who replied: “That cannot possibly be real.” Others have displayed similar skepticism online.) When the video first hit the internet in 2017, multiple sources reported that construction workers stumbled across the scraggly birds, known as eastern barn owls, at a site...