tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010Tue, 21 Apr 2026 10:07:22 +0000<b>==&gt; <i><u>THE</u> </i>blog devoted, since 2005, to news &amp; commentary on the most iconic bird in American ornithology, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (IBWO)... and sometimes other schtuff [<i>contact:</i> cyberthrush@gmail.com]</b><br> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)Blogger1711125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-1132527442836964531Fri, 27 Feb 2026 23:17:00 +00002026-04-10T12:20:23.179-04:00-------------------------------------------- Nothing especially new to report, but did want to acknowledge the only good news I've heard this year 😉 that the Reiser Bros apparently ARE working on an independent film on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Their last film "Listers" was highly entertaining, and literally the best independent film I've ever seen (helps, but not necessary, to be a birder tohttp://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2026/02/reiser-brothers-owen-quentin-are-at-it.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-3813227111677857447Thu, 18 Dec 2025 16:57:00 +00002025-12-18T11:57:47.024-05:00&nbsp;----------------------------------------------------&nbsp;In the prior post I put in a&nbsp;plug for The National Aviary (501c3 nonprofit) as a destination for any charitable donations you might wish to make — and of course that holds ANY time of year, not just at the holidays. At the time, I didn't know of a way to direct your contribution specifically to their “Project Principalis” (for http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/12/followupupdate.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-5709284558973878168Mon, 01 Dec 2025 18:48:00 +00002025-12-18T11:59:58.637-05:00-------------------------------------------------------Hey all, just popping in briefly at this special “giving” time of year to put in a plug for The National Aviary which, as most of you know, put forth some of the last substantive published evidence for the persistence of the Ivory-bill (in central Louisiana). If you care to include them in your end-of-year charitable giving they have many http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/12/and-happy-festivus-to-all.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-2137592578622726127Thu, 24 Jul 2025 16:00:00 +00002025-07-24T12:00:00.109-04:00&nbsp;----------------------------------------------&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;#^&amp;*!@)&amp;!!! &nbsp;YEARS......Had hoped to come up with some clever or thoughtful, insightful or entertaining, way to wrap things up a bit here…. but alas, hasn’t happened, and the near-ridiculous 20-year blogiversary of this site has arrived (the last dozen years http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/07/time-flies-but-does-ivory-billed.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-4263216317504228415Sun, 06 Jul 2025 13:50:00 +00002025-07-06T09:50:13.351-04:00&nbsp;--------------------------------------------------“…Trump’s election was the dagger in my heart.” &nbsp;-- David SuzukiNeedless to say, the destruction of habitat can easily lead to the end of species.I have followed great environmentalist/activist/scientist David Suzuki off-and-on for decades. And I know how easy it is, as we age, to become increasingly pessimistic about the state of the http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/07/are-we-too-late-for-ivory-bill-and-too.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-5686741960485144747Sun, 22 Jun 2025 20:00:00 +00002025-06-22T16:00:00.114-04:00&nbsp;-------------------------------------------------It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result…. know the feeling!…&nbsp; Even though some folks have tried different things, new technologies have come along, and a variety of ideas get floated, basically for 80 years we’ve been returning to the same places, traipsing http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/06/where-oh-where.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-2598687315481358519Tue, 17 Jun 2025 15:00:00 +00002025-06-17T11:00:00.166-04:00&nbsp;———————————-------——— A FB poster passes along this fairly interesting background &amp; overview of eDNA (1+ year-old article) as a tool in biological research. eDNA has been more regularly appearing &nbsp;in IBWO-search discussions, though still not too sure how practical it is, let alone how definitive… The article calls it “relatively inexpensive” though one of the complaints I’d heard http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/06/edna.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-883132144018261134Fri, 13 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +00002025-06-12T20:05:08.219-04:00&nbsp;—————————————----—"When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross..." &nbsp;-- Sinclair LewisOff-topic today, bigly off-topic (…but silence not an option)…. Saturday is “No Kings” or “Hands Off” protest day (may go under other names in different localities); perhaps the largest national protests since the Viet Nam era, or possibly ever?.... while http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/06/first-they-came-for.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-7404242423957148269Thu, 12 Jun 2025 00:27:00 +00002025-06-11T20:31:30.687-04:00https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRV5LoOMyBkhttp://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/06/little-music-from-another-era.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-795335863624042273Thu, 05 Jun 2025 10:00:00 +00002025-06-05T06:31:52.782-04:00&nbsp;----------------------------------------------Today I'm privileged to interview Dr. Michael K. Steinberg, professor at University of Alabama, and author of the wonderful 2008 volume "Stalking the Ghost Bird" (focused on the search for the IBWO in Louisiana) and get his responses to some Ivory-bill-related&nbsp;questions. Here we go:****************1)&nbsp;&nbsp;Please tell readers whatever http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/06/catching-up-with-author.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-3715935908556007484Mon, 02 Jun 2025 10:11:00 +00002025-06-02T16:31:43.404-04:00&nbsp;------------------------------------------------Again today will do exactly what I wished to avoid doing, which is replay or rehash old material, but there just doesn’t seem to be anything new and significant coming down the pike.... except more and more and more Pileated pictures :((&nbsp;(...already put this on a Facebook page, where Don Scheifler had brought it up,&nbsp;but since so manyhttp://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/06/old-mystery.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-360083034111459842Sun, 01 Jun 2025 10:00:00 +00002025-06-01T11:25:52.527-04:00&nbsp;-------------------------------------------------Fred Virrazzi offers a draft/tentative assessment of current IBWO population numbers here [CORRECTION: what is presented are old 2005 estimates; updated 2025 estimates are in-process, with fewer question marks; see Fred comment below]:https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1D4sFuQQgR/Not looking super hopeful (though more than Tanner estimated 80+ http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/06/numbers-game.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-1882370725479153285Thu, 29 May 2025 11:00:00 +00002025-05-29T07:00:10.972-04:00&nbsp;--------------------------------------------------In a longish message on Facebook, Chuck Hunter has announced his&nbsp;retirement from USFWS after 37 years of doing what he loved, and was so good at!&nbsp;https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16M7W8HRVq/I won't try to encapsulate Chuck's contributions to the Ivory-bill story (it would take too long, and if you've followed the story long enough http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/05/chuck-hunter-retires.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-4178178611939805017Wed, 28 May 2025 11:03:00 +00002025-05-28T11:37:15.582-04:00&nbsp;--------------------------------------------------Will take a moment to recommend&nbsp;that, if you are on Facebook and not already doing so, follow Charles Alexander’s “Ivory-billed Woodpecker” group page for the interesting history and excellent writing it provides (without the controversy and fuming that can accompany the subject):https://www.facebook.com/groups/1440928267041569...and onhttp://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/05/readings.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-6990123237438778554Sun, 25 May 2025 01:42:00 +00002025-05-24T21:42:01.726-04:00——--------------------———————— People’s interest/fascination with the Ivory-billed Woodpecker often borders on obsessive… especially among “believers.” Might be interesting to hear how/why/when folks following the saga first got so interested in the topic.&nbsp; If you remember how you got drawn in, be it a year ago or 60 years ago, feel free to drop me a few sentences or paragraph explaining it.http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/05/how-did-it-start-for-you.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-1438320878965211781Tue, 20 May 2025 11:00:00 +00002025-05-20T18:17:49.190-04:00&nbsp;———————————————— Since I bring up the issue of leucistic Pileateds with some regularity (including previous post)&nbsp;I'll repeat here what I recently posted over at a Facebook site (for the MANY who no longer patronize FB). Someone had posed the question, how many leucistic PIWOs are there? Not a question that can be answered with precision obviously, but I figured it would be fun (http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/05/how-many-leucistic-piwos.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-3088449890607064195Sat, 17 May 2025 11:23:00 +00002025-05-17T17:27:23.094-04:00&nbsp;————————————————————[ How many of these are flying around the Southeast U.S.... nobody knows... ]I’ve repeatedly covered all this before, but with so many new folks oddly drawn into the Ivory-bill story&nbsp;recently (despite little new evidence)&nbsp;maybe worth stating yet again in a single posting, the things troubling me most: 1)&nbsp; Large partially leucistic woodland birds (with http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/05/matters-that-keep-me-awake-at-night.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-44830394828967940Sat, 17 May 2025 02:25:00 +00002025-05-16T22:25:43.381-04:00&nbsp;-------------------------------------------------Just a reminder that the official 2010 USFWS “Recovery Plan For The Ivory-billed Woodpecker,” chockfull of information, is freely available online here:https://ecos.fws.gov/docs/recovery_plan/100719.pdf-------------------------------------------------http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/05/old-usfws-report.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-4625285710207312354Fri, 09 May 2025 11:00:00 +00002025-05-09T07:27:03.095-04:00&nbsp;----------------------------------------Recently, Dwight Norris used a lot of Bill Pulliam’s old material at his IBWO FB page, which is great so that the many ‘newbies’ get some sense of Bill’s contributions to this whole debate (before he passed away too young at 56, in 2017). Chuck Hunter recently mentioned to me that during the whole USFWS/Cornell endeavor, Bill was one of his “Go-to” http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/05/bill-pulliam.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-4151514237050900512Mon, 05 May 2025 11:30:00 +00002025-05-05T07:30:00.122-04:00------------------------------------------Am very pleased to present an interview with long-time birder and IBWO&nbsp;searcher, Erik Hendrickson, who was a volunteer with Project Principalis (in La.) from 2007 through 2023.&nbsp;He&nbsp;notes that he grew up around various national parks, studied engineering (Georgia Tech, Colorado State); worked as a research engineer at the National Bureau of http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/05/interview-with-searcher-long-post.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-9179322771917073745Sat, 03 May 2025 20:42:00 +00002025-05-03T16:44:12.860-04:00--------------------------------------------- Last year, about this time, I shared one letter (below) that I received over a dozen years ago, for sheer entertainment (had shared it previously with a few folks in private but never on the blog). In earlier days, short scammy, hokey letters that were more annoying than interesting weren’t that uncommon (along the lines of ‘Hey,&nbsp;I’m just a poor,http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/05/i-get-mail.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-3805248356374112112Mon, 28 Apr 2025 20:31:00 +00002025-04-29T05:51:08.535-04:00&nbsp;----------------------------------------------Already mentioned this on a FB page so we’ll revisit it here as well…Over the years some folks have called the Ivory-bill “Schrodinger’s Woodpecker” after “Schrodinger’s Cat” (famous physics thought experiment in which a cat is simultaneously alive and dead until an observer comes along to view it and cause those two probability waves to http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/04/of-physics-woodpeckers.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-4905907644741618648Sat, 26 Apr 2025 11:50:00 +00002025-04-26T07:50:45.031-04:00----------------------------------------------- First, a little housekeeping: All future comments are now on “moderated” format meaning I have to okay them before they are posted — a super nuisance for me, but it’s also what most bloggers do these days (if they allow comments at all) -- I’m just late to the party. And as I received complaints about the string of comments on a recent post (a few http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/04/of-comments-and-curses.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-6915757529962956067Thu, 24 Apr 2025 20:50:00 +00002025-04-24T16:50:04.464-04:00&nbsp;----------------------------------------------Keep finding stuff in past postings I don’t even recall writing! I occasionally did transcribed interviews here with key persons in the IBWO storyline, and that included one almost 15 years ago with long-time active Ivory-bill enthusiast David Martin (generally known as “Fangsheath” back in the day). I’ve edited out one question that is no http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/04/another-blast-from-past-old-interview.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14762010.post-3636609402517436530Thu, 17 Apr 2025 23:16:00 +00002025-04-17T19:16:56.781-04:00&nbsp;———————————-------———Apologies, that as much as I’m trying to look forward (and for new material!), I keep falling back into the past 😕.&nbsp; I don’t even remember half of the stuff I’ve written over the years so was a bit (pleasantly) surprised to stumble upon these paragraphs I put on paper over 25 years ago after the David Kulivan Louisiana claims, but well before all the Big Woods http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2025/04/keeping-faith-in-our-ignorance.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (cyberthrush)2