Ivory-billed Woodpecker Campephilus principalis
Not included in the Sibley Guide to Birds (extremely rare, presumed extinct).
Download a page on identification of Ivory-billed Woodpecker (pdf file) for your Sibley Guide to Birds
The claimed 2004 rediscovery in Arkansas
Since the last confirmed record of Ivory-billed Woodpecker in the US (1944 in Louisiana) there have been many claims of rediscovery. The most recent began with the public announcement in April 2005 that one bird had been seen and videotaped in Arkansas. The scientific publication presenting the evidence is:
Fitzpatrick, et al. 2005. Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) Persists in Continental North America. Science. 3 June 2005. 308: 1460-1462.
The key piece of evidence in this claim is a brief and blurry video clip captured in April 2004 near Brinkley Arkansas, by David Luneau.
Along with many other birders and ornithologists, including Jerome Jackson, Rick Prum, Mark Robbins, and Kenn Kaufmann, I became skeptical soon after reading and reviewing the evidence. In March 2006, three colleagues and I published a response to the original claim. Our conclusion is that all of the features shown in the video are consistent with a normal (and common) Pileated Woodpecker and therefore there is no verifiable evidence to support the claim that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker has been rediscovered.
Sibley, David A., Louis R. Bevier, Michael A. Patten, Chris S. Elphick. 2006. Comment on “Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) Persists in Continental North America”. Science. 17 March 2006: Vol. 311: p. 1555. Supporting Online Material
Fitzpatrick et al. responded by insisting that most of their original interpretation was correct, and that ours was flawed, without directly addressing our key points:
Fitzpatrick, J. W., et al. 2006. Response to Comment on “Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) Persists in Continental North America”. Science. 17 March 2006: Vol. 311: p. 1556.
Louis Bevier has a detailed website addressing many of the questions surrounding these claims.
In 2007 Martin Collinson (website) independently analyzed the Arkansas video, comparing it to video of a known Pileated Woodpecker in Ohio, and concluded that “there are features of the video of the bird in Arkansas in 2004 that are inconsistent with Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and the video is equally, if not more, consistent with Pileated Woodpecker.”
Collinson JM. 2007. Video analysis of the escape flight of Pileated Woodpecker Dryocopus pileatus: does the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Campephilus principalis persist in continental North America? BMC Biology 5: 8.
In 2007 I wrote two detailed articles on my blog discussing various aspects of the claimed rediscovery:
Ivory-billed Woodpecker – status review
“After three years of fruitless search efforts, with several studies refuting the original claim and not a single independent study supporting it, it is grossly misleading to suggest that the evidence is “convincing” and it is irresponsible to place the hypothetical needs of this species ahead of the known needs of so many others.”
“The sound (even though it too was ambiguous …) helps cross a decision threshold – that Ivory-billed is likely, that the white really did seem to be on the trailing edge of the wings, and that the bird that just flew away must have been an Ivory-billed.”
To date (November 2009) there is still no verifiable evidence that Ivory-billed Woodpeckers survive in the US.
Posts about Ivory-billed Woodpecker:
- 30 October 2007 : Certainty in sight records (16 Comments)
- 23 October 2007 : Ivory-billed Woodpecker – status review (17 Comments)
Although I’m not a ornithologist with extensive education on the subject ( neither was Audubon ) I have seen hundreds of Pileated Woodpeckers flying away from me in my life and mostly in escape flight I might add. Never once in the many times I have observed the Luneau video did I feel I was looking at a normal Pileated. The wings seem too long and not as stubby as a Pileated. Also, about midway through the sequence the birds goes with a bit more power to gain altitude and I see it thrust its neck and head more upward. During this time the bird appears to have a longer neck than a Pileated. And basically, overall the way it flies is just wrong for a Pileated. Another good vernacular name for the Pileated could be “The stubby winged woodpecker” as far as I’m concerned. I have since studied many filmed sequences of Pileateds in flight to refresh myself with the bird, having spent a few years lately in Utah and Idaho. Again, I would not think the Luneau bird looks like a Pileated. I’m more of a raptor specialist but that does not mean I don’t know my woodpeckers.
Mark, I could go on for pages about why the video can’t be an Ivory-billed. I understand what you’re saying, the video didn’t look like a Pileated to me when I first saw it, but I think the video is essentially irrelevant now. It is so blurry and ambiguous that viewers can project whatever they desire to see there. Fitzpatrick et al’s original analysis was seriously flawed and their conclusions were overblown, and later independent analyses (mine, and Collinson – see above) pointed out the mistakes in Fitzpatrick’s claims and showed that the video fit a Pileated Woodpecker. After millions of person-hours of searching, no real proof was ever found, and now even Cornell admits (quietly) that there are no Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in Arkansas.
Mr Sibley, one question? Have you or any of your esteemed co authors ever seen a Ivory Billed Escape flight to compare this video too or is it just easier to compare to what you know. Next question? Where does it say that Cornell Lab queitly admits it doesn’t exist. From what I have read there stand is there is not enough of a population to let the bird survive. My opinion which you probably will disregard is they went about this search all wrong instead of putting a large crew in place stealth is best. As a hunter and my first love of birds the only way to see wildlife is being quiet and taking your time. I know how these people feel. When I was 11 yrs old on my aunt’s farm in marshall, Wi. I saw my 1st pileated woodpecker no one believed me until last year when they where sited again in the area some 33 years later as a hunter in Wisconsin I see Pileated’s every year and what I see in the video and what I have seen in real life are two diffirent birds. I have seen pileated’s in Wisconsin, missouri, Virinia, Texas, Illinios, and Kentuckey all fly the same when scared not like the video and trust me I am a pileated fan I have a wild life print and other items. Because it was my first major discovery of birds in my life. If I had the time and money I would go to the area’s of this bird and look for myself with a small crew like it was done in the 1930′s. The right way! It would take a while but some where pictures and video would come out with proof I don’t believe this bird is gone but I also don’t believe the population is going to survive the next 50 to 100 yrs. Due to a 20 to 30 year life span the birds being seen and heard today are the remminants of what survived from the florida, singer tract and the big Thicket populations. The feds should have stepped in sooner when the laws where allowing for people to go out and shoot them for them selves or in Texas when a male was shot just so the gentleman could prove to the Texas wildlife and Fish service would beleve him that he saw it. It is time to start listening and not being such a doubter on this. It is people like you that will surely put this bird in with the passanger pigeon and the carolina parakeet.
Andrew, As I replied to Mark the video is essentially irrelevant now. Everyone has done their analysis and there is no consensus. So, contrary to Fitzpatrick’s original public statements that this was “rock-solid proof”, the video has no value as evidence. The only thing that can influence the debate now is substantive new evidence, but none has been found, and there are hundreds of other species that could go the way of the Passenger Pigeon while we are distracted by the vanishingly small possibility that Ivory-billed Woodpeckers might persist. If people want to keep searching that is their business and I don’t criticize that. I choose to focus on other things.
Hei guys, don´t fight, we are in the same vessel.
I do know that their are other specie’s of birds and other wildlife need our attention too. But what gets me that some one of your stature is kind of quick to denounce what others saw with their own eyes. I’m not here to fight or ruffle you color but have have never read the fact that there is concrete proof that the bird does not exist. Neither you nor I know that answer for sure and probably never will. I just wish that if it does people leave it alone. They we have done enough to destroy the flora and fauna of this nation. My hope one day is that this bird does come back like the Whooping Crane or the attempts they are trying to do with the Kirtland’s Warbler but this bird will need the help of a lot more. anyway I have spent time at my local book store, Border and Barns & Noble looking at the bird guides that you have authored. I have not bought a new bird guide in 20 years because I own so many and they are getting worn from the years of use and with my children being only two and five and they spend time with me watching birds and other wildlife i thought it would be time to up date my guides. I was sadden when I was looking through yours that you don’t even mention the possibility that this bird might still exist. Even though I like you guides the best I still have some thinking to do.
Hi Andrew, We’re not far apart in our views. And it’s true there is no way to prove that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is gone – as some like to say “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” – but a long period of intensive searching without any real confirmation does offer some “evidence of absence”.
I do disagree with your comment that I have been “quick to denounce what others saw with their own eyes.” and I hope you’ll consider my explanation: First, what we see with our own eyes is open to all sorts of “fudging” in our brains, and there are endless examples and scientific studies of this. Second, I have tried hard not to “denounce” anyone (except maybe the Cornell team that launched and promoted this whole debacle – they should have known better). I know first-hand how easy it is to misidentify a bird, and how embarrassing it can be, and I have simply tried to point out that the observers could have been mistaken. I’ve written about my own mistakes, making the point that misidentifying birds is not lying. It just means we were tricked by the play of light, or by our expectations, or any number of other things. And it’s especially easy to be tricked when the sightings are as brief as all of the recent Ivory-billed reports. Finally, I don’t think I did any of this quickly. I became skeptical of the video a couple of weeks after it was made public. By that time there had already been over a year of intensive searching and the best evidence they could show was the blurry video and a few brief glimpses. I waited another three months, agonizing over what to do, studying and restudying the video, before I said anything publicly about my skepticism, and my colleagues and I published our paper refuting the video almost a year after the announcement. I’ve said very little about it since then. So far, I think the evidence (or absence of evidence) has supported my interpretation of the video, but I get no pleasure from that.
The thing that upsets me most was that so much time, effort, and money was being poured into a bucket that was obviously leaky.
As far as including the species in my field guide, there is no right or wrong approach. I made my decision around 1995, and I left out Ivory-billed Woodpecker for the same reasons I left out Bachman’s Warbler, Eskimo Curlew, Green-breasted Mango, etc – there simply weren’t enough verifiable records of the species in the past thirty years to meet my criteria for inclusion. I also didn’t want to give the casual reader the impression that they might see any of those species, because creating that expectation leads to a lot of misidentifications. On the other hand, better information can prevent misidentification, so I now have the Ivory-billed Woodpecker page here on my website for download.
Appendix B of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Recovery Plan (http://www.fws.gov/ivorybill/pdf/IBWRecoveryPlan2010.pdf) is quite critical of your analysis of the Luneau video, indicating that your interpretation is “based on misinterpretations of video artifacts as plumage, and novel interpretations of typical bird flight”. While I’m sure you disagree, it seems like there is no harm in allowing for the possibility that the Fish & Wildlife Service, Cornell, Bill Pulliam etc. are correct and you, Collinson, etc. are incorrect about the Luneau video since as you say it is irrelevant at this point anyway. We all look selectively at evidence which supports our own interpretations in cases where a conclusion is not immediately clear, and as you make clear you apply that standard to yourself as well as to others like Cornell. Your statement, “And it’s especially easy to be tricked when the sightings are as brief as all of the recent Ivory-billed reports” is itself selective since Appendix F of the Recovery Plan lists several detailed and/or extended sightings. Indeed, the Kulivan sighting which began the recent attention to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker was a close observation of a pair of birds for 10 minutes.
Thankfully, there is alot of convergence between those who assert one thing or the other in the Ivory-bill saga or take a more agnostic view. As a practical matter, I think all of us across the spectrum agree that the right course of action is to do nothing for now. The gradual recovery of bottomland habitats gives us hope that if the Ivory-bill has there wherewithall to persist, it will have the opportunity to do so. Personally, I think it’s pretty cool that the Ivory-bill has flummoxed us all and reminded us how much we don’t know about the world around us.
I’m not here to ruffle your collar. Sorry about that but the boy was talking about coloring.
Hi Mr. Sibley, I have done a lot of reaserch and reading on the internet about you and some of your fellow ornithologist and you are the only one at this time that I have found real respect for. For someone of your class to spend the hours,days and years as you did out putting your dream together and drawing and painting your birds from life and not museum specimens hats off to you. I just wonder what three specie’s you couldn’t paint from real life? My bird bible is Birds East of the Rockies By Rodger Tory Peterson, I own 3 copies all which are over 25 yrs old. But I own over 30 Different bird books that I have collected either by gifts or purchase at yard sales or used book store’s. In my life I never got the pleasure to meet my three influences that would have been the father of conservation Aldo Leopold and my two bird men Peterson and Owen J Gromme. Anyway as in life get back to the real item we have been going back and forth about. I have done a lot of reading about the ivory bill and my conclusion is that we don’t know and never will! But I will tell you a story in 1988 I was in the army stationed at Ft. Hood, Texas my buddy and I were in north east Texas after we had one of our weekends of partying and took a wrong turn and that’s how we ended up in the oppisite direction of the post as we pulled in to a little cafe out in noman’s land he climbed in the back seat to sleep and I went inside as I was sitting there paging thru an audobohn magizine an older lady started talking to me about general crap and we got talking about birds and I told her how I got intrested at an early age and she told me that when she was between the ages of eight and eleven her grandfather would take her out to an area by there land every spring and they would canoe around until they found a nesting pair of ivory bills. She said they did that until he passed away. He had told her never to mention it to anyone cause he didn’t want them shot. She was eleven.when he passed. She was 68 in 1986 so if I did my math right that would have made it about 1928 to 1931. then her name was Grace. when Grace was 30. Her husband and her went out and looked because she wanted to see them and remember her grandpa but they looked for 4 days and never heard one let alone saw one so she figured they were extinct. I figure this to be about 1950 or so. So she proceeded to tell me that her 30 year old son was home on leave in 1966 a military career man and that he was out canoeing doing a little fishing in early april. When he had gotten home that evening he describe to a T what she believed to be an ivory bill nesting and she made him promise to take her out to the site after he got back from Vietnam but he never made it home. So 20 yrs later when she was talking to me she had said that she believed him but that she would never tell anyone. And that they probably were not around anymore So as I read all this internet crap and a lot of it is crap you kind of have to filter out the junk. And know what to look for. I did and do believe her story because that was about the right time frame. As for the Big Woods I don’t know what they saw and I can’t argue with someone like you. When you have more knowledge about these birds than I do. But this Dan Rainsong Claim looks a little crooked. As for myself everything I have learned I did on my own. Except for my wife and kids and the my hunting dog. Birds are my 1st love and I have spent many years watching and listening to there calls and have studied many books on them. Thus is why over the past couple of days I have orderd Tanner and Hoose’s books on the ivory bill just to read about a bird I want to know more about it. Any how I do like the fact you do reply and that I can ask you for your opinion since your older by 3 yrs. (Haha) maybe someday we will meet hope all is well and thank you again. Hey patch that leaky bucket. Hey Mr Sibley, you never gave me a reason why I should choose your book over anyone of the other ones its time for my bible book to get into the 21st century. To me and more than your average joe birder want a book that includes extremly rare or extinct birds so my children learn the right way this is what happens when you don’t protect or manage the right way. That’s just my opinion.
Here is what I say about the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. I could go out tomorrow to Fla, Ark, Tex, or La and see a Ivory Billed Woodpecker and come back and report the sighting. I would be told I had to see a Pileated (sic), not a Ivory Billed. I could go out later and take a picture with a normal Didgital (sic) camera and I would be told that the picture is not good enough to make an identification. I could then go out with a good SLR and take a picture. I would then be told that either it is of a stuffed bird or some kind of a fake. I then could go out and video the bird for 10 min or more. Still would be told it is not a Ivory Billed, would not matter how good the video is. One reason is I am not a certified bird watcher, scientist, or other qualified individual, or a well known scientist. Yes I have hunted all my life, duck hunted a lot, in flooded timber where Id is quickly required. Yes I have watched hundreds of Pileated (sic), been doing that since 8 yrs old. Have observed them in Fla, SC, Ga, NC, and Miss. Sometimes watching the Pileated for hrs while sitting in Deer stands and Turkey hunting. Yes seeing them fooling around for long periods in a section of woods. I am 61 now. Now that leaves only two options to prove if I really saw what I said. Capture the bird or shoot it, both of which are illegal.
Do I think there is a good possibility that the Ivory billed survives, yes. Do I believe that some of the sightings in Fla through the 50′s, 60′s and 70′ are probably factual? Yes I do. Very good possibility.
Well you are one of the few. I have always thought that there is some romote location in the south that they might possably exist. But after reading james a tanner’s Book and phillip Hoose’s book on the ivory bill they leave little room for the bird to exist. As Mr Sibley put it they are throwing good hard cash away on one bird that they cannot locate again. What they really need to put their focus on is the here and now. NO ONE has really said any thing about the massive kill rate on migrating birds caused by the wind energy farms. More research should be done on how to detour birds away from them or put more money to real education on how to preserve land for all species and not just one. You can’t blame Cornell or any of the rest of them for looking but after 4 years and no repeat pictures proves it just wasn’t there. The birds were not that secretive read the race to save the lord god bird and learn how the idiots like Alexander Wilson, John James Audobon and Goerge Beyer went out found the ivory bills and shot them. for collections they did not try to collect one or two birds but to keep killing them almost out of greed. Beyer made me sick to my stomach knowing full well the species was in decline and shot seven of them in one week. Including a whole family. Yes I hunt but what I harvest goes on my plate for my family and I. It almost sounds like they did it for fun at times. Now as far as birds surviving today little if any chance at all. The singer co. made sure of that. Their niche in the wild was too sensitive all these sightings that go on in the last decade or so and no one has ever seen the birds again it makes you wonder. You have to ask yourself what was it they really saw there. Which leaves one question do they really exsist. I will let you wonder that I came to my own conclusion after I read those books. Yes I do believe they did survive into the mid 1900′s but only stragglers with the increase of outdoor activities over the past couple of decades if they did exsist they would have been seen and documented
Uhm. No reply from anyone. I wonder why that is. The kulivan sisgting was another expensive exploration that yeilded no more sightings and nor did they here any kent calls so once again this expensive and fruitless hunt for a bird that has not proven that it exsit in decades and the millions of dollars that have been thrown at it could have been used some where else. Let’s take the time and reflect on all the searching and hunting for this bird in the last decade and nothing. It is what it is. And that’s a memory caused by the idiots that killed them for there own collections and for specimans. This is the reason I am not a fan of the Audobon Society.
Hi Andrew et al. I’m just getting some time to look back at this for a brief reply. When I left Arkansas after about 8 days of searching in early May 2005, one of the things that struck me was that everywhere I went I met hunters and fishermen, and all of them knew about the “rediscovery”, and they were all looking and carrying cameras. I drove home thinking “If this bird still exists, somebody will find it within a month” because there was so much excitement and every acre of that swamp was hunted or fished at some point. Putting a small team of expert birders and some automatic cameras out there was a good backup, but that couldn’t begin to match the coverage provided by duck hunters, deer hunters, turkey hunters, fishermen, foresters, and all the other people who live and work there.
So now we have to refocus, find some other conservation issues that need our attention, and try to be objective and realistic about how we approach those.