Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology

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Ivory-billed woodpecker
Ivory-billed woodpecker

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is an institute whose mission is “To interpret and conserve the earth’s biological diversity through research, education, and citizen science focused on birds.” The lab is associated with Cornell University and has several faculty on site as well as nonfaculty directors, students, and a large staff of scientists, educators, web developers, communications and marketing specialists, and program administrators. The lab is focused mainly on birds, but also does research, more generally, on biological diversity; specific programs include citizen science, bird population studies, a bioacoustics research program, an evolutionary biology program, and the Macaulay Library, the largest collection of animal sounds in the world, with more than 160,000 recordings and a growing archive of natural history video--many now included in the Birds of North America online resource. Citizen science projects include Project FeederWatch, NestWatch, eBird, Celebrate Urban Birds, The Great Backyard Bird Count, The House Finch Disease Survey, Birds in Forested Landscapes, and the virtual citizen science project, CamClickr. Together, the lab's citizen science projects engage more than 200,000 people across North America and beyond. The lab is located in the Sapsucker Woods in Ithaca, New York, and includes trails that are open 365 days a year.

The lab's main library, the Adelson Library, part of the Cornell University Library system, contains historical and contemporary ornithological materials, including an extensive collection of monographs and journals.

In the spring of 2005, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology announced that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, thought to have been extinct for decades, had been rediscovered in Arkansas. They presented a video as evidence. This was challenged by a team led by David A. Sibley and by Jerome Jackson of Florida Gulf Coast University. They identified the bird of the video as a Pileated Woodpecker. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology rebuffed these claims in return. The debate is still ongoing about the existence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.[1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Hayes, Floyd E.; William K. Hayes (2007). The Great Ivory-billed Woodpecker Debate: Perceptions of the Evidence. Birding Magazine. American Birding Association. Retrieved on 11 May 2007.

[edit] External links

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