Birds (pdf)

"The ivory-billed woodpecker, a spectacular bird long thought to be extinct, has been found alive in North America, Science magazine reports."

The last confirmed sighting was in 1971 in southern Louisiana. Most ornithologists now believe the ivorybill is no more.


"Later, Harrison said, "I have always believed that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker still lived, and finding one has been a dominant force in my life for more than three decades. Finding an ivory-bill was a 33-year dream come true for me."



Fitzpatrick is among the few to have witnessed one of the seven recent sightings of an ivory-billed woodpecker. He saw the bird in March 2004.
A reported sighting of an ivory-bill in Florida in 1999 initiated intensive searches for the bird that was last documented in 1944. Fitzpatrick was invited in March 2002 by the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology to join the search team, working as a field biologist/ornithologist first in Louisiana, and the following year in Florida. Another reported sighting early in 2004 in central Arkansas set off renewed searching, and Fitzpatrick worked with the team in that area in 2004 and 2005. The sightings were announced in April 2005 in the journal, Science.

But, said Richard Prum, a Yale ornithologist and one of the three, while he found the audio convincing it did not change his opinion that the bird in the video is a pileated woodpecker. A co-author, Mark Robbins of the University of Kansas, said only that he found the audio compelling. Jerome A. Jackson of Florida Gulf Coast University was out of the country when the paper was withdrawn. He still does not accept the video or the audio evidence.


"evidence for the existence of a population of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, in the form of unambiguous photographs/videos, specimens, or DNA from feathers, has not been forthcoming.", diz não sei quem, na wikipedia (?), com razão.
A mim cheira-me que os avistamentos são nitidamente uma grande aldrabice. Pena.
(A quantidade de gente que uma não-coisa sustenta!)