Des indices de la présence du Pic à bec d’ivoire en Floride

On May 21, 2005 Dr. Geoff Hill, ornithology professor at Auburn University, and two research assistants, Tyler Hicks and Brian Rolek, took a kayak trip down the Choctawhatchee River in the Florida panhandle. Within an hour of launching their boats, they heard a bird hammering loudly on a tree. When the bird flew off through the canopy, Brian got a clear view of a large woodpecker with white on both the upper- and underside of the trailing edge of the wings. An hour later, Geoff heard a double knock, the diagnostic display raps of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker. In this same area, they found large cavity entrances on the trunks of trees and places where woodpeckers had scaled tightly adhering bark from recently dead trees. Brian’s sighting, the double knock, the huge cavity entrances, and the scaled bark all suggested that an Ivory-billed Woodpecker might exist in this mature swamp forest. One week later, Geoff and Tyler returned to the area. They split up to search the forest, and at nearly the same spot where Brian saw an ivorybill the week before Tyler got an excellent view of a female Ivory-billed Woodpecker through his binoculars as it flew through the understory and then swooped up and disappeared in the canopy of the forest. Tyler noted several diagnostic plumage characteristics of a female Ivory-billed Woodpecker including upper and underwing pattern, white stripes down the sides of the bird’s back, and an all black crest. In late July Brian returned to the area and watched two Ivory-billed Woodpeckers fly over a creek channel. The second bird followed the first bird as is described in the historic literature on ivorybills.
Geoff, Tyler, and Brian decided to conduct a winter search to try to gather better evidence for the presence of ivorybills. They asked Dr. Dan Mennill to join the search and conduct sound monitoring in the area.
Between May 2005 and April 2006, 13 probable Ivory-billed Woodpecker were seen, and dozens of feedings signs, large cavities, « kent ! » and double raps were counted, suggesting that a population of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers may have survived in the Choctawhatchee River Basin.
We propose you some photos of the search and the collected evidences.