Listening for the Ivory-bill
April 2005
Audio recordings turned up calls and double knocks. Were they made by Ivory-billed Woodpeckers? Follow the links next to the images below to listen to recently analyzed recordings and read the opinions of Lab experts.
Ivory-billed Woodpeckers are elusive and difficult to see in the
dense, swampy woods where they live. In 2004-05, a team of more than 50
people from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, The Nature Conservancy, and
other partner organizations, spent about 15,000 hours searching 38,500
acres of the Big Woods
of Arkansas. Individual searchers encountered an Ivory-billed
Woodpecker briefly at
least seven times. Additionally, David Luneau, a professor from the
University of Arkansas, captured a few seconds of video footage of an
Ivory-billed Woodpecker taking off from a tree.
During the search, a bioacoustics team from the Cornell Lab of
Ornithology deployed 24 autonomous recording units in the Big Woods of
Arkansas. They rotated these units to
monitor 153 different sites, allowing them to cover larger areas
for longer periods of time than would have been possible otherwise.
After sifting through more than 18,000 hours of audio recordings, researchers have found a number of intriguing sounds they believe could have been made by Ivory-billed Woodpeckers.
Join
the Cornell team as they document sounds from the Big Woods and gather
intriguing clues that add further evidence of the elusive Ivory-billed Woodpecker.
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--The Technology Behind the Recordings Learn how the search team gathered and analyzed more than 17,000 hours of audio recordings. |
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--The “Double Knock on Wood”
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is the only bird in the United States
that has a double-rap display drum. Listen to the sounds to see if you
think they were made by Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. |
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--The “Kent” Calls
Compare nasal tooting calls from the Big Woods with recordings of
Ivory-billed Woodpeckers recorded in 1935. Listen to the sounds of
ivory-bill imposters—Blue Jays. |
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-- What Do the Experts Think?
Read results of the bioacoustics analysis by Cornell Lab of Ornithology researchers. |
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--The Blue Jay Challenge
Have you heard Blue Jays making calls that sound like those of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers? Send your recordings to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for use in the next round of analysis! |
