Cuban IBWO photos--implications for habitat, wariness
Touche said:
Recently-discovered IBWO images from 1940s/50s Cuba over at Cornell
here.
(Thanks to Cyberthrush for alerting these on his blog)
...
Yes, thanks CT! A couple of interesting points about IBWO field marks and biology may be evident in the photos. There are so few photos of the species, any new ones are of interest. Here are some of my impressions. (I'm a pretty good birder, and a good photographer, for what that's worth.)
First photo (the one from the Moa area in 1956 by George Lamb):
1-The bird is in a pine forest. I have read in several other places some interesting statements about how pine forest may have been more important than is generally appreciated for the IBWO in the United States (
Cyberthrush, for example, and apparently a hypothesis of the ornithologist Lester Short). Both the Cuban IBWO (perhaps a different species) and the Imperial Woodpecker lived in pines. Reading, recently, Lawrence Earley's
Looking for Longleaf, I am impressed how extensive, and full of large trees, the southeastern Longleaf forests were. The range of the IBWO and the Longleaf largely overlapped, and in Florida the similar Slash Pine (
Pinus elliottii) was present. The Ivory-bill could have hardly avoided these pine forests, and the severe decline of the IBWO (catastrophic in the 1880's, apparently) does correlate with the decline of the Longleafs. Reading accounts of the Singer Tract birds, one wonders if their decline could have been due to the failure to protect surrounding pine forests, if any. (I believe the birds declined or left mostly before their breeding areas were logged.) Tanner concentrated on the bottomland sites, but perhaps the birds were foraging in pines.
2-The pines at the Moa site were not that large. Of course, Lamb found no breeding there--perhaps it was not optimal habitat.
3-Lamb got close enough with as standard lens (no telephoto according to Gallagher's account) to get an identifiable photo. Looking at the full-size photo, if that is nearly the full frame, I'd say he was within 100 feet (30 meters), maybe closer. The bird was not that shy--it certainly did not fly for miles on sighting a human, and I imagine Lamb was not wearing a Ghillie suit!
3b-The bird in Lamb's distant photo is easily identifiable as an IBWO, both due to the white wing patches and the white stripe on the back extending up the neck. This is visible even on the highly-enlarged, grainy photo, made with 1950's optcial technology by an amateur photographer. The white bill is not visible.
The
second photo, from circa 1941, is interesting for much the same reasons:
4-The bird is roosting, or nesting, in a dead pine tree. It is not that large of a tree, either. (Of course, the Cuban population was almost gone then, so it may have been in poor habitat.)
5-The bird appears to have allowed a very close approach. Although there is no information available about the camera, the photo is not highly enlarged--I don't see any sign of graininess. (Compare the enlarged photo by Lamb, which is very grainy.) It is unlikely the photographer had a telephoto, because these were not common except among professional photographers at that time. If this was taken with a standard lens, the photographer was very close indeed. The angle of the photo also indicates the photographer was looking up at quite an angle--that he might have been almost at the base of the tree.
6-That photo shows the field marks of the Ivory-bill very well: white wing-patches, white stripe on back and neck, and white bill.
Some conclusions:
I-Ivory-bills may have depended a lot more on
upland pine forests than most realize today. Efforts to "restore habitat" for this bird seem to be focusing on bottomland hardwood swamps. Such efforts may be ineffective, even if the IBWO still exists.
II-The Cuban Ivory-bills were not particularly wary, matching, I feel, the historical accounts of North American birds--wary when persecuted, not overly wary when not molested. (See notes below)
III-Even photographs made with consumer-grade equipment from the 1940's and 1950's show the field marks of an IBWO at a distance. Compare the recent fuzzy images (Luneau, Harrison, et al.) put forward as evidence of the continued existence of the IBWO. The comparison is not flattering. Surely people could do better today with digital sensors and the excellent telephoto zooms now available on still and video cameras.
***More on tameness or not, of the IBWO***
James Tanner's accounts of the Singer tract birds indicate they were somewhat shy around the nest (see quotes of Nancy Tanner's statements in this forum), but could be approached fairly closely without camouflage in other situations. Tanner,
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker, p. 63: "When I began following the birds to observe their behavior, they were at first shy and alert,..., and did not allow too close an approach. But they rapidly became used to a person and in a day or so would pay little or no attention to one a moderate distance away. I frequently stood almost directly under the tree in which they were feeding without disturbing them." On that same page, Tanner reports an account by Arthur Wayne that IBWO were very shy in an area where they had been collected intensively.
Likewise the artist Don Eckleberry found the lone Singer Tract IBWO present in 1944 to be quite approachable--he followed it for days, guided by a local man, Jesse Laird. I do not see in Eckleberry's account that either of them wore camo. (Search for the Rare Ivorybill. Terres, ed.,
Discovery--Great Moments in the Lives of Outstanding Naturalists, pp. 195-207. Lippincott, 1961.)
Historical accounts tell of the ability of artists and ornithologists to approach the birds for a good look and/or shot (usually both, the art following the shot, of course). See
Cornell's page for a summary. Catesby saw them, Wilson saw them, and Audubon saw them many times. All, it seems, were able to get close enough to obtain specimens with 18th or 19th century firearms.
Cyberthrush tells us how Native American hunters were able to take IBWO with (presumably) bow-and-arrow, using the bills and plumage for ceremonial objects. See his interesting essay,
The Iconic Ivory-bill. Native Americans were able to approach the birds closely enough for a bow-and-arrow kill, and had done so for centuries. Note that the birds were under hunting pressure from Native Americans for
millenia. To propose that they suddenly developed supernatural shyness in the 20th century seems ludicrous to me. Don Hendershot's tongue-in-cheek hypothesis that recent sightings actually represent a previously undescribed species,
Campephilus willowispis, makes more sense than that!
). I did say 'under this definition'. But if you can point out why this definition is 'misinformation', please do so.
