Ivory-billed Woodpecker Dead or Alive?

The hopeful knocking sounds recorded by ornithologists last January in Louisiana's Pearl River Wildlife Management Area while searching for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker were not bird noises, but gunshots according to Cornell (N.Y.) Laboratory of Ornothology. (See Is the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Really Extinct?, and Science News, June 22 '02, Vol.161, p.397, "Zoology: Oops. Woodpecker raps were actually gunshots."

And maybe somewhere a Passenger Pigeon.

September, 2002