A little good news

"I stood transfixed as I saw the bird land on a tree about 50 feet away," she related on her Web site. "I had an unobstructed view. The sight was overwhelming. The bird was huge, and was hanging from the trunk of the tree, not more than 15 feet off the ground, with its wings folded on its back.

"There were two large white triangles on the wings," she wrote. "A shaft of sunlight was shimmering through the red crest. The bird had a long neck and prominent shoulders. My mind was clicking off the field marks, but there could be no doubt as to what I was seeing."

— from Scientists report possible sightings of bird feared extinct on CNN.com, previewing a report in Science

See also Mary Scott's site, whence comes the quote above.

The upshot: the authors of a paper in Science are pretty sure from some video they've got that the Ivory-Billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct for as much as 60 years now, is, after all, still going.

Damn. A twenty inch wingspan. Bigger than a Pileated. That, in case you're wondering, would make it the largest extant species of woodpecker. Nice to have a little good news, now and then.