It’s a mystery that has both fascinated and confounded everyone from ornithologists at top-tier universities to casual weekend bird-watchers for decades. Are there still ivory-billed woodpeckers roaming the wilds of the southeastern United States or have they all gone extinct?
While the bird has not been photographed since the 1930s, a new study conducted by a researcher at the Naval Research Laboratory posits that – despite the lack of definitive evidence of the species’ existence – the so-called “Lord God bird” is not extinct and its habitat needs to be protected if the woodpecker hopes to thrive.
Michael Collins, who works at the Stennis Space Center in southeastern Mississippi and has made researching the ivory-billed woodpecker a pet project of his for more than a decade, published his findings in the online journal Heliyon. In his study, Collins presents evidence – including three videos that show birds he believes to be the ivory-billed woodpecker – that he says proves that the elusive bird is not extinct.
“You’re not going to find the birds by going out and looking for them for a week or even a year,” Collins, who spent 1,500 hours between 2005 and 2013 in Mississippi and Louisiana’s Pearl River region looking for the woodpecker, told Fox News. “Over eight years of intense research I’ve only had 10 sightings of the bird.”
Among his research is video footage Collins shot while kayaking and climbing trees of the purported woodpecker’s signature swooping flights, rapid wingbeats, and audible double-knock. These findings are consistent with reports of sightings of the bird made back in the 1940s.
From Fox News: https://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/01/25/extinct-or-not-new-study-claims-extinct-ivory-billed-woodpecker-is-still-alive.html