Thursday, March 15, 2007

Ivory-billed Woodpecker Paper

Collinson JM. 2007. Video analysis of the escape flight of Pileated Woodpecker Dryocopus pileatus: does the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Campephilus principalis persist in continental North America? BMC Biology 5: 8.

Now online from here as a provisional pdf.

Things have gone a bit wacky here - will try and answer all queries in turn.

3 comments:

Bonsaibirder said...

Hi Martin,

I take it you are getting a few extra "hits" since your paper came out !

Anyway - well done for making the effort to publish the paper.

I have always thought that the Nolin birds would have carried on longer with the fast wing-beats if they had been planning to land further away. I expect woodpeckers start to slow down the moment they set eyes on their landing site, which in this case must have been very soon indeed.

The Luneau bird showed no signs of stoppping throughout the whole video.

Cheers,

John said...

As Director of the Department of Cryptozoology in the University of the Highlands and Islands I am appalled that you deny the existence of Woody Woodpecker without first conducting a thorough search of his cartoon habitat. I also took umbrage at the part about deinterlacing, because I really don't know what that is. The rest was drivel, except that I recall an incomprehensible comparison you made between an apple and an orange in regard to the color yellow, which might make it a lemon. Be that as it may, there are no current openings in the department. Good day, Sir!

Martin said...

Hi bonsai (Steve!). Yep - the Luneau bird ain't stopping before it hits Louisiana. The rush to gain height and speed explains both the fast wingbeats and the flexed wings.

Crypto-prof... I didn't know which was the best use of my time, comparing apples with oranges, or making paper aeroplane IBWOs and PIWOs, and videoing them flying through the woods of Arkansas, and then comparing them to a dodgy video of a scared PIWO and trying to publish it :-)