Sorry for not updating

I had too many errands to run this time, and haven't been able to update the blog. I will rotate out again in one week, and promise lots of photos.

I haven't encountered any suggestive evidence recently. It's been bitterly cold and often rainy to boot out there. Some colleagues in another camp report some possible sightings, though nothing diagnostic has been observed. To exist or not exist, that is the question....

Back in from another week in the swamp

I'm tired and will post more over the next couple of days.

It was another interesting and productive week. I did some transects in some very promising areas, but didn't have any detections. Hopefully some of the cavities and feeding signs that I and my teammates are finding will help the project locate an IBWO or two. I'll elaborate at greater length in subsequent posts.

Good night!

If IBWOs do exist back there, they have plenty of woodpecking company

(Click on all images to enlarge!)

A beautiful adult Red-headed Woodpecker. Red-headed Woodpeckers have similar wing patterns to IBWOs in flight, though I doubt too many would mistake one for the other.

Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers may be the most common woodpeckers here. Their arhythmic soft taps and meowing calls are some of the most frequently heard sounds in the Choctawhatchee Valley.

Red-bellied Woodpeckers are also common.

Another sapsucker

Another Red-headed Woodpecker

Images from the Choctawhatchee

It has a red crest. It must be an Iv.... No, wait! (photo taken in town)

The beautiful Choctawhatchee.

Paddles down the river require constant vigilance for snags like these.

Palmettos abound in the undergrowth.

This American Bird Grasshopper is a far more effective user of camouflage than I am. (click on image for closer view)

This out-of-focus poison ivy plant has leafed out already. I likely contracted my case from one of the ubiquitous leafles vines in the forest.

This Cow Killer, or Red Velvet Ant (Dasymutilla occidentalis) is actually a type of wingless wasp. I was so enamored of its beauty that I handled it. Big mistake! It delivered an excruciating sting to my thumb. But then, I suppose I'd bite your thumb if you tried to pick me up.

Northern Cardinal.

A oft-occurring perspective of the wet, woody forest.

Gulf Coast Box Turtle

Note the girth of the Bald Cypress behind me. Note the girth of the belly of the Bald Eagle in front of the Bald Cypress!

Some reptilians I've befriended....

....include this Brown-headed Skink, Gulf Coast Box Turtle, and Water Moccasin

New link added

Check out Cyberthrush's http://ivorybills.blogspot.com/ for loads of information on the search for the IBWO.

Hello from Florida!

Greetings from the Florida panhandle. I just rotated out of the flooded Choctawhatchee River forest after 7 nights in, and am getting a little R-and-R and running some errands in our cosmopolitan little town before I cycle back in tomorrow.

The past week has been surreal, and I don't quite know where to start. I'll be updating this periodically over the course of the day, so stay tuned. Hopefully I can get some photos posted.

In the meantime, I'll direct you to the links on the blog, and give you a few bullet-pointed highlights from my first week in.

-On my first day I heard suggestive "double-knocks" deep in the forest, which may well have come from an Ivory-billed Woodpecker (henceforth known by its banding code "IBWO." I'm still on the fence as to whether the bird exists at all, though slowly coming around to believing that it does. I'm quite familiar with all of the other woodpeckers in these forests, and have never heard anything quite like this.

-I really enjoy my teammates. It is a diverse bunch that includes a mid-50s veteran of the Cuban search for the bird in the '90s, a lovely veterinarian couple from North Carolina who are graciously volunteering three months of their time from their sabbatical, and some 20 somethings who are, with the exception of my students (:-), some of the sharpest, wittiest, most competent young folks I've ever met. I also have a fantastic field boss.

-In the middle of my stint deep in the wet woods, my team was interviewed by a documentary crew making a movie about the IBWO and those personalities involved in the search for it. How bizarre! One moment I'm kilometers from any other person, stuck in a back channel with soaking feet and face-to-face with a venomous water moccasin (aka cottonmouth). Three hours later I'm back in camp hobknobbing with George Butler, the director of the film "Pumping Iron," the vehicle that carried Governator Schwarzenegger to fame.

-I've spent hours kayaking.

-Discomforts and threats I'm coping with are: heavy, heavy rains (I left the Northwest for this?!), poison ivy that has left me Ichiro and Scrachiro all over, the aforementioned water moccasin (no gators yet), dangerous snags in the river, freezing mornings, and other sundry irritants one typically encounters while roughing it.

But I'm loving it out there.

More later!