The Swirling Brain sent us a pointer to a UC Berkeley new release about the use of a robotic camera to look for evidence that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is not extinct. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding this bird in recent years due to several reported sightings. The robotic video system, known as ACONE, evolved from COLABCAM, an earlier automated camera, and is part of a larger project called Collaborative observatories for Natural Environments (CONE). The system uses vision recognition to identify bird flight movement. The system records only birds known to match the flight patterns of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. For example, any birds flying slower than 20 mile per hour or faster than 40 miles per hour are ignored because they are outside the speed range of the Woodpecker. The system, based on a VIA Mini-ITX motherboard, records 22 frames per second on a 3 megapixel camera. Example bird photos and more details about the system can be found on the ACONE Software webpage.