And Busted!

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have assiduously followed the search for the fictional ivory billed woodpecker. Why? We have absolutely no idea other than it gave us a chance to whip out Photoshop and have a ball. But it seems that the much ballyhooed four second video clip that has generated most of the continuing efforts to prove that the extinct bird isn't may not be of an ivory billed woodpecker at all. A new analysis of the footage indicates that it is simply a mis-identified pileated woodpecker. Now that has been the subject of much debate all along, but this new analysis, by a British scientist, may be the jolt of reality that cools the ardor of the hopeful.

Research published in the journal BMC Biology compares footage of the common pileated woodpecker with a now-famed video shot in 2004 by David Luneau in the swamps of Arkansas of what he believed to be an ivory-billed woodpecker.

Before that, there had been no confirmed sightings of ivory-bills for half a century.

Luneau's finding, which appeared in the journal Science in 2005, has been disputed by several bird experts. A new study by J. Martin Collinson of the University of Aberdeen in Britain raises even more questions.

The study compared Luneau's video with footage of the pileated woodpecker, a similar, large but common species that is also black and white with a dramatic red head.

As I have been saying all along, it would be lovely if the species was not, in fact, extinct. But the entire way this came up and became an issue stinks to high heaven. It just happened to become an issue when the Corps of Engineers wanted to start a project in the area. Then a kayaker conveniently "saw" the bird and tree-huggers got a court to block the project. Junk science, indeed. (Incidentally, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is very likely going to take a hit to its reputation if it turns out that this was a fraud all along. Just saying.)