Woodpecker Weekly Roundup 2/6/09

For this week's roundup, I am going to do something a little different. You see, I am in Trinidad and Tobago this week, so I am putting together this post a week in advance of when I normally would. And since I cannot predict blog posts of others, this would be a very short post indeed. But in the spirit of trying to keep up with this challenge I set myself of posting something woodpecker oriented on a weekly basis, I am going to give some links to cool non-blog websites that I enjoy visiting occassionally!

Annales Zoologici Fennici published the Proceedings of the 6th International Woodpecker Symposium, which took place in August 2005. As a woodpecker enthusiast, I found this to be very interesting reading (others might find it a bit dry in places), and ordered a printed copy a few years back. You can read several articles on-line at the above link and select Volume 43, Number 2.

Some time ago, I came across the web site for Digimorph, A Nationaal Science Foundation Digital Library at the University ot Texas in Austin. According to the site "The Digital Morphology library is a dynamic archive of information on digital morphology and high-resolution X-ray computed tomography of biological specimens." Of course, the first searches of the archive that I did was for woodpeckers. The scans are unbelievable sharp and detailed, and you can really get a good sense of the internal structure of whatever animal you are searching for. Woodepeckers, with their specialized adaptations for excavating holes, and extremely long tongues make for a neat stude here. Ones I found specifically interesting were the Golden-fronted Woodpecker because it is a good representation of most of out medium sized woodpeckers, and of course the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. (I don't really need to mention why, do I?) Make sure you try clicking different movies, it may take some time to download the info, but really worth it!

Once you are done studying & reading about woodpeckers on the internet, you may want to get out and see some live birds. One way that I can highly recommend is to contact Steve Shunk of Paradise Birding, and try to attend the Woodpecker Wonderland Festival. Steve is a fantastic guide, and knows his woodpeckers so well that he was tapped to write a volume in the Peterson Guides series for North American Woodpeckers (similar to the great book that is out there for gulls that came out about two years ago)

Hopefully the film "Ghost Bird" a documentary about the search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker by Scott Crocker will be out soon, but in the meantime you can watch a trailer, and browse through the gallery, history, etc at the home page.

Speaking of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, if you want to find out the latest on the Cornell search, they occasionally post info here. But they are far from the only searchers out there.
I have a hard time keeping up with it all myself, but there are several dedicated searchers and scientists out there that do, and a simple google search will lead you to many.

I think that I am going to leave it at that for now. I've got plenty of other links I can provide, but want to keep some in my pocket for another time.

As always, if you have some cool info or a post about woodpeckers, drop me a line - I'd love to know about it.