Woodpecker behavior

[Kenn Kaufman]

The reported rediscovery of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in Arkansas has been 
mentioned on ohio-birds many times over the last 11 months, which suggests 
that this is an acceptable topic for this forum.

Last month in Ecuador we caught up with a related species, the Powerful 
Woodpecker (Campephilus pollens).  I'd missed it on previous trips to South 
America -- not surprisingly, since it's rather rare.  In The Birds of 
Ecuador, Vol. 1, Robert Ridgely says that it's "rare to uncommon and perhaps 
local."  In Vol. 2, he expands on this to say that its habits are "similar 
to other Campephilus woodpeckers, though Powerful's home range seems 
exceptionally large and as a result the species is encountered only 
infrequently."  We found a family group in forest on the east slope.  The 
birds were wary, as one would expect with a large woodpecker, and they were 
in dense forest, but we were able to follow them at a respectful distance 
for a long time, and Kim even got decent photos with her small digital 
camera.

The encounter got me to thinking about our North American species of 
Campephilus, and I went back and reread Roger Tory Peterson's account of 
seeing the Ivory-bill in 1942. (This was in RTP's wonderful book, Birds Over 
America, published in 1948.)  He had sought the bird in South Carolina on 
the basis of rumors there in the 1930s, but finally he went to the Singer 
Tract in Louisiana, the last place where there were still known to be any 
living Ivory-bills (two adult females had been seen there a few months 
earlier).  The Singer Tract was big, 80,000 acres, and there were no 
stakeouts such as roost sites, so Peterson and his companions knew it 
wouldn't be easy.  It wasn't:  it took them a whole day and a half to find 
the birds.  Once they found them, though, they were able to follow them for 
almost an hour.

Now, about these freakishly elusive, supernaturally un-photographable birds 
in Arkansas... Once you look at the only "proof," the famous four-second 
video, and realize that it actually shows a Pileated Woodpecker, you have to 
wonder: What's really going on there?

Kenn Kaufman
Rocky Ridge, Ohio