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Residents in Rockport, Massachusetts are dealing with an unlikely vandal: a woodpecker causing chaos across the neighborhood and shattering windows. While many initially thought the culprit was a person, the true identity of the "vandal" is far more feathery. Damage to car mirrors Janelle Favaloro was the first to notice strange damage to her car, with two mirrors destroyed. At first, she suspected her husband, who in turn blamed their son. However, when the same thing happened to her brother-in-law's car, parked next door, Favaloro began to piece things together. "People from the neighborhood responded and they said, 'Oh my...

Shock absorption would make them less efficient peckers, study argues Scientists have long hypothesized that a spongy bone in the woodpecker’s skull cushions its repeated head slams like a well-designed safety helmet. (Indeed, engineers have modeled football helmets and shock-absorbing electronics after this idea.) But a new analysis shows the birds may be opting for power over protection. ...But woodpeckers, despite smacking with accelerations three times the human concussion threshold, seem to escape unharmed, says Sam Van Wassenbergh, a biomechanist at the University of Antwerp and lead author on the study. This impressive resilience led previous researchers to search for...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Federal wildlife officials say spending more than $27 million to research the suspected habitat of the ivory-billed woodpecker is worth the cost, despite conflicting views on whether the elusive bird even exists.

Once again, scientists report they have found evidence of ivory-billed woodpeckers, this time in Florida. But having observed the turbulent disputes among ornithologists and birders that followed the report last year that the bird had been found in Arkansas, these researchers are proceeding with caution. Geoffrey Hill, of Auburn University in Alabama, and Daniel Mennill of the University of Windsor, in Ontario, both biologists and ornithologists, say 14 sightings and extensive sound recordings “provide evidence that ivory-billed woodpeckers may live along the Choctawhatchee River in the Florida Panhandle.” The report appears online in a Canadian journal, Avian Conservation and Ecology...

BOILING SPRING LAKES, N.C., Sept. 23 (AP) — Over the past six months, landowners here have been clear-cutting thousands of trees to keep them from becoming homes for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. The chain saws started in February, when the federal Fish and Wildlife Service put Boiling Spring Lakes on notice that rapid development threatened to squeeze out the woodpecker. The agency issued a map marking 15 active woodpecker “clusters,” and announced it was working on a new one that could potentially designate whole neighborhoods of this town in southeastern North Carolina as protected habitat, subject to more-stringent building restrictions....

Birders Find No New Evidence of Woodpecker By ANNIE BERGMAN Associated Press Writer © 2006 The Associated Press LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — With news Thursday that search teams had found no new confirmation of the ivory-billed woodpecker's existence in the swamps of eastern Arkansas, wildlife managers said there was no longer a reason to limit public access to the region. "Based on the information coming from the search and research that we have done, I feel there is no need any longer to limit public use within this area," said Dennis Widner, manager of the Cache River Wildlife Management Area...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Listening devices placed in Louisiana swamps in hopes of recording the sound of the ivory-billed woodpecker picked up sharp raps that turned out to be gunfire, not sounds of the rare bird, researchers said Sunday. The ivory-billed woodpecker is widely believed to be extinct, but a Louisiana State University student's detailed account of a possible sighting in 1999 raised hopes that there are still some around in south Louisiana's Pearl River Wildlife Management Area. In a search last winter by Cornell University and Zeiss Sports Optics of Chester, Va., a dozen acoustic recording units, or ARUs,...