Wednesday, February 08, 2006

-- Cornell's Luneau-Clip Analysis --

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Cornell has posted their promised in-depth analysis of David Luneau's film clip here:

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/ivory/rediscovery/support/

--- fairly lengthy, extensive analysis; much of it repeats info presented in the original Science paper but in much greater detail; best part may be the more extensive use of actual film/photos of Pileateds in pertinent positions/poses. I think this presentation will be quite convincing to a great many folks, although still leaving room for doubt among hardened skeptics. Will be interesting to see if a planned skeptical rebuttal to the original Science paper is still published (or yanked), as it will now have to address this further analysis.
Personally, I still find it troubling that SO much weight has been placed on the Luneau video from the start --- 7-16 sightings by credible, credentialled observers should be convincing enough (and would be for any species other than the IBWO); the video is simply one additional piece of data.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is Clip 11 disturbingly similar to the Luneau video, or is it just me?

Anonymous said...

Regarding Pileated Clip 11, yep this is in many ways similar to the Luneau video of the mystery woodpecker (Cornell says so, so no one here has come to any original revelation)and exactly for that reason this seems to be key. When going frame by frame through this clip occasionally you see extensive white, but in most frames you see extensive black and almost always see black trailing edges.

In essence this clip 11 is really most similar to the re-enactment of the Pileated model and bears little resemblance to either the original Luneau video or the Ivory-bill re-enactment in the consistent amount of extensive white shown on the wings in almost all frames and no hint of anything other than white trailing edges.

Still waiting for someone to produce that Pileated Woodpecker clip that doesn't show black trailing edges in most frames and does show symetrical patterns of extensive white on both the upper and under wing pattern. Waiting, waiting, waiting...hey, this should be easy to do folks. There's a lot of normal pileateds out there and many of us have video cams, so what's the hold-up?