All Intensive Purposes

Though some scientists had disputed the claim that ivory-billed woodpeckers still survive, they have changed their tune after hearing new tape recordings.

Even the most skeptical ornithologists now agree. They say newly presented recordings show that at least two of the birds are living in Arkansas.

Richard O. Prum, an ornithologist at Yale University and one of several scientists who had challenged the most recently claimed rediscovery of the ivory bill, said Monday after listening to the tape recordings that he was now "strongly convinced that there is at least a pair of ivory bills out there."

Mark B. Robbins, an ornithologist at the University of Kansas, who had also been a skeptic, listened to the same recordings with a graduate student and said, "We were absolutely stunned."

Dr. Robbins said the recordings, provided by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, were "astounding." Of a paper questioning claims of the woodpecker's discovery that he, Dr. Prum and another scientist had submitted to the Public Library of Science, he said, "It's all moot at this point; the bird's here."