I hear you knockin’ – but can you come in?

The birding community is atwitter with news that three prominent biologists are challenging the evidence posited by Cornell ornithologist John Fitzpatrick and the ivory-billed dream team as proof of the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Arkansas. I say, “What took you so long?”

Yale University ornithologist Richard O. Prum, University of Kansas ornithologist Mark B. Robbins and Florida Gulf Coast zoologist Jerome A. Jackson, the author of In Search of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, have penned a paper to be released any day now online at PloS Biology. Apparently, the three question the conclusiveness of about four seconds of video that the Cornell team used as proof of the ivory-billed’s existence.

Jackson was quoted in a July 21 New York Times article as stating, “In my opinion the data presented thus far do no more than suggest the possibility of the presence of an ivory-billed woodpecker. I am most certainly not saying that ivory-billed woodpeckers are not out there. I truly hope that the birds do exist in Arkansas or elsewhere and have been championing this idea for a long time.”

I remember when I first saw the video. My reaction was, “How in the world can you say what that is – it’s a big blurry black and white bird,” and I wrote an article to that effect in my May 4 Naturalist’s Corner in The Smoky Mountain News.

By the next week’s article I had found a Web site, www.sciencemag.org, that had out-takes of the video. There was an image of a bird perched on the side of a tupelo tree, in the May 11 Naturalist’s Corner I wrote, “I could not even detect this from the video itself. To me this image is the most telling. It shows just a portion of the dorsal surface of a bird perched on the side of a tupelo gum. The image is of “Bigfoot” quality, but for the life of me I can’t think of anything it could be other than an ivory-billed woodpecker.”

Now there are three scientists who believe they can shed some light on that image and the video – I say, “Turn it on!”

There was a big splash of publicity when Cornell et al made the announcement that the ivory-billed was back from extinction. But after a week you could have heard a pin drop.

I emailed some friends – some in academia, some with ties to Fish and Wildlife and some serious birders – “What’s the deal?” I wanted to know.

How could these claims of rediscovery of a creature believed extinct for 60 years go unquestioned – especially a claim with such political and environmental repercussions. I remember my aborted sojourn through the halls of higher learning. You could not gather three students, professors, research assistants etc. without an obligatory heated debate about the latest discovery or newest theory posited. It’s what science was and should be – eternal questioning.

The answers I received were consistent — it’s about birds, birders are the only ones who care, and/or the integrity of Fitzpatrick and Cornell are unchallengeable.

OK, I can accept that banter among birders would not make the press or any scientific journals. But I couldn’t believe that there weren’t serious scientists out there without any questions.

On August 1, the New York Times reported that Prum and Robbins, upon receiving more info — in the form of audiotapes — have withdrawn their criticisms regarding the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker.

“The thrilling new sound recordings provide clear and convincing evidence that the ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct,” Prum said in the article. Jackson, the third author of the paper questioning the rediscovery was out of the country and hasn’t heard the recordings. The recordings come from the White River Refuge, just south of the Cache River where the bird was videoed.

I agree with Fitzpatrick, Cornell ornithologist and leader of the ivory-billed search team who was quoted in the article. “We sent them the sounds. I wish we'd done that earlier,” he said. But he noted that the process was science in action at its messy best

It looks like the bird lives and that’s cool. To see the complete article go to www.nytimes.com/2005/08/01/science/earth/01cnd-bird.html.

(Don Hendershot can be reached at ddihen@earthlink.net.)