Tuesday, November 15, 2005

-- Some of The Folks Involved --

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If you haven't already seen it, there are short blurbs/bios of people involved in the Arkansas search (with nice quotes) available at:

http://www.nature.org/ivorybill/team/

(...and geee, despite what skeptics might have you thinking, most of these folks even have credentials, college degrees, experience, and appear non-hallucinatory!!)
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those of the team with sightings...IBWO sightings from supplement to Science paper (Supporting Online Material). Listed as:
"Other convincing sightings [in addition to the Luneau video of 25 April 2004] from the Big Woods. Of at least 15 reported visual encounters between 11 February 2004 and 14 February 2005, seven contained sufficient detail for the authors to treat them as authentic." These were:

11 February 2004: G. Sparling
27 February 2004: T. Gallagher and B. Harrison
5 April 2004: James M. Fitzpatrick
10 April 2004: Melinda LaBranche
11 April 2004: Melanie Driscoll
9 June 2004: Harrison (sighting also described in Natural History article by Harrison)
14 February 2005: Casey Taylor

I count seven individuals with "convincing" sightings. All have one sighting, except Harrison, who has two listed.

Biographical information from The Nature Conservancy:

Bobby Harrison:
B.A., fine arts, emphasis in photography, Andrews University
M.S., media technology, Alabama A&M University,
Associate professor of art and photography at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama. Also listed as "award-winning wildlife photographer".

Gene Sparling: "entrepreneur and naturalist"

John W. Fitzpatrick: B.A., Harvard University Ph.D., Princeton University. Professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, Cornell University. Former executive director of Florida’s Archbold Biological Station and curator of birds at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History.

Tim Gallagher B.A., magazine journalism, California State University M.A., English, California State University. Editor-in-chief of Living Bird. "Professional Wildlife Photographer."

Melanie Driscoll: Volunteer Sound Analyst

Mindy LaBranche: member of Part-time Ivory-bill Search Crew

Casey Taylor: member of Full-Time Ivory-billed Woodpecker Search Crew

Anonymous said...

A couple of observations:

5 April 2004: It is John Fitzpatrick's brother Jim, not John, that saw the IBWO. He is a naturalist but I couldn't find anymore.

10 April 2004: Melinda LaBranche is a PhD in Zoology ( specialized in ornithology with a dissertation on Red-cockaded Woodpeckers), from North Carolina State University. See

http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agcomm/magazine/fall05/elite.html

I couldn't find any other details about C. Taylor and M. Driscoll. Gallagher's book has some other information about them I believe.

Anonymous said...

Oh, here is a good list of all the most accepted sightings from Cornell--I had not seen this before.