Thursday, March 30, 2006

-- B. Russell's List Update --

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Mary Scott has posted an updated version of Bob Russell's "Top Ten" potential Ivory-bill sites with appended notes to his original list, the most interesting of which may be the following, related to the White River NWR area:
" Volunteer searchers in this area went plunging towards a likely call in the woods. They converged on the triangulated tree, and two Pileated Woodpeckers flushed from the crown. They turned off their video cameras and recording equipment. An Ivorybill then flew out from the center of the tree. No longer the Grail Bird, the ivorybill is turning into the nemesis bird!"

http://www.birdingamerica.com/toptenibwpsites.htm

Addendum: as noted by a commenter below, the above paragraph has now been removed from Mary's webpage -- I'll assume it was not a valid or credible report (...or even an early April Fool's joke gone awry????), unless someone has another explanation. . . .

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5 comments:

Mike's Soap Box said...

Wow! A typical sighting. Did anyone see anything on this woodpecker? How come we the readers always read " I saw a IBWO " and that is it! What about field marks? This is why skeptics are having a field day on these type observers and their observations!

Mike Collins will chat about paddling along the Pearl River and talk about how beautiful the Swallow-tailed Kites are and then he ends the article, "I heard a Ivory-billed today and I feel I am getting closer"

Then the next day he will write "I took some photos where the calls were calling from and when I was done taking photos I saw two ivory-billeds flushing from the banks of the Pearl. I think tomorrow I am going to go back and get their photos".

Then the next day " Oh I saw sopme lovely Prothonotary Warblers today. I did not relocate the Ivory-billeds I saw yesterday but I heard 3 more coming down the river where I was. I am getting hotter!"

Then you get these observers sending photos that show nothing but a blur of a image. They always say "I thinks it's a Ivory-billed what ya think?"

Everytime I read any more reports of Ivory-billeds I no longer get frustrated but I laugh my ass off instead!

Stonecoldbirder

Anonymous said...

It is suspicious that they'd turned off their video and audio equipment.

Maybe that's a little fib. They may have actually flushed the bird just as they were standing there taking a pee. That always happened to me when I was grouse hunting.

Anonymous said...

I mean every time they miss the bird? You hear an IBWO and turn off your video camera? If you heard real kents like from Allen's 1935 expedition, I don't think you'd turn off anything.
And what kind of cameras are these anyway? Tanner flushed IBWOs and sometimes it took him 90 minutes to find them again.
Do the cameras have to reboot?
I'm with stonecoldbirder, I'm sick of these false alarms. And then
of course, unlike Tanner, nobody is ever able to find the bird again. And nobody, nobody has a
used hip-mounted tape recorder from K-mart that they can switch on when they hear such Kenting?
The kind I used to jog with until
I learned in 1980 that nature's music was way better.
But hey they got one detail right...the Pileateds were more wary than the IBWO. That's about the most credible thing about this sighting so there's hope. Anyone ever hear of 3 adult Pileateds together during breeding season?

Paul Sutera

Anonymous said...

This "sighting" has been removed from Bob Russell's list.

Certainly it can't be true that yet another "tantalizing" rumor proved to be baloney!??

Anonymous said...

www.fishcrow.com is a practical joke. Don't you guys and gals get it?