-- Bill Pulliam --

 ----------------------------------------

Recently, Dwight Norris used a lot of Bill Pulliam’s old material at his IBWO FB page, which is great so that the many ‘newbies’ get some sense of Bill’s contributions to this whole debate (before he passed away too young at 56, in 2017).

Chuck Hunter recently mentioned to me that during the whole USFWS/Cornell endeavor, Bill was one of his “Go-to” people for careful/objective analysis of evidence/data. Back at the time I too used Bill as one of a few go-to folks for thinking about various things. We didn’t always agree on conclusions, but I always knew I would get a well-reasoned, honest, even blunt opinion from him…. he had the rare ability, shared by few, to place any biases aside in a lockbox where they didn’t impinge much upon his thinking, and look at evidence coldly, squarely for what it seemed to show. 

In an odd coincidence it turned out that J. Christopher Haney (author of “Woody’s Last Laugh” — if you haven’t read it, what the hell are you waiting for!!! ;)) — also knew Bill personally, having overlapped in college with him (at UGa). Here’s part of what he once wrote to me about Bill (reprinted with permission):

“Bill was one of the sharpest and quickest minds that I've ever known. He did not suffer fools, or foolishness, ever. His reactions to IBWO-consistent sightings in TN during that decade struck me as quite similar to what I have observed in other people who were once firmly (or near-firmly) convinced that the bird was extinct. One can see and even feel the intense cognitive strain they are under as they reorient internally to some new information, data that requires adopting a different stance. I got the impression that Bill could scarcely believe what he was seeing, or hearing, or hearing about, yet at the same time the bits of evidence were too much to ignore completely. Or to casually dismiss….

Bill's stance with extant IBWO certainly evolved. At minimum he ultimately slid into something more 'agnostic,' certainly not 'atheist' in orientation. He always followed his nose for the evidence. If his certainty reached the higher level of 'believer', I was not privy to that attainment. And I'm not sure he would have used those conventions. I know he became far more skeptical about how we, us humans, perceive this bird, and how inflated are birders' notions of omniscience when it comes to being able to find or divine whereabouts of scarce birds.”

My own view from personal communications would be that at the time of his death, Bill safely fell in the ‘believer’ camp, albeit tentatively (and wanting more evidence). He was always the iconoclast, living off the grid in a Tennessee hamlet, basically as a farmer (I think) and somehow finding the time to put his sharp mind and dial-up computer to work on serious birding matters! He was especially well-known and respected by the Tennessee birding community, but also well-beyond those borders, especially for his many contributions to eBird.

Here’s what I wrote on the blog at the time of his death (which includes some links to other people’s words, including Mark Michaels):

https://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2017/08/very-sad-news-bill-pulliam-passes.html

[...and if you were to type Bill's name into the blog search bar here you’d find plenty of other post-references to him.]

IF this species is ever finally documented for good, hopefully Bill's name will get a deserving spot among those who helped bring it about! 👍

----------------------------------------