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A couple weeks back Steve Sheridan added an addendum to his webpage detailing 2 Ivory-bill sightings in southern Indiana by a Robert Creviston back in 1970 ( the same year Steve believes he first saw the species in S. Indiana -- outside its traditionally-defined range). Scroll down near the end of his page for the new info, or if you've never visited his site before you'll probably want to start at the top and read all the way down.
http://www.sheridanzoo.com/ivorybill.htm
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9 comments:
I find these southern Indiana sightings really impossible. he will need solid pictures or videos. There is no way anyone will accept such unlikely sightings. No way. He needs to prove it. There are people who swear they have seen bigfoot and the loch ness monster. Without real proof, he will fall into this category.
Cougars, Black Bears and White
Pelicans do not require old growth
forest in order to survive - Ivory-
billed Woodpeckers require large
tracts of old growth forest
in which to breed and maintain a viable population. The last extensive stand of old growth forest was cut in the early 40's. No proof of nesting by Ivory-bills has been found since that time. In order for the birds to exist today there had to be many successful nestings over the past several decades - where are they hiding? All of Ivory-bill reports since the 50's have involved 1 or 2 birds - no family groups have
been reported.
Anonymous wrote:
"No proof of nesting by Ivory-bills has been found since that time."
"All of Ivory-bill reports since the 50's have involved 1 or 2 birds - no family groups have been reported."
Both assertions are misleading at best. The list of sightings at
http://www.birdersworld.com/brd/default.aspx?c=a&id=471
includes the following:
Pair sighted in Thomasville, Georgia in 1958 and a pair sighted near Eglin AFB, Florida, 1968.
In addition, Heinzmann's 1967-1969 sightings (which included the recovery of a feather) were of a pair. The controversial Fielding Lewis photos were also of a pair, as was Kullivan's 1999 sighting.
While I'm not aware of any reports of "family groups", the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. The fact that there have been several sightings of pairs and multiple sightings of individuals in various locations around the South suggests that there may be scattered small breeding populations. There have simply been too many sightings by experienced observers to draw an analogy with bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster.
As to Steve Sheridan's sightings, they are within the historic range of the Ivory Bill, and if you read his description, it is quite detailed and convincing.
AA Allen edited books had the bird's range as including Indiana. Reading the old literature (before the Ivory Bill was declared extict -- I believe that has happened three times now) showed the bird was in Indiana, and certainly as far north as St. Louis, Missouri. I see no reason to say it was not in Indiana. The proof is otherwise.
Just as people found it impossible to believe that the Singer Tract had ivorybills until one was shot and brought in as proof we will always have people that demand to place their hand into the wound on the side...
The habitat described by S. Sheridan and the other witness from his website seem inappropriate for IBWOs. One sighting was a bird flying across a marshy area. S. Sheridan had one in his backyard on a stump eating ants? I know Pileateds frequently do this. What kind of trees were these birds in? Was it bottomland forest, tupelo, cypress or upland oak? It just seems far-fetched. A picture would be worth a million words in this case. Get a picture/video and the world will believe. This is also the standard that everyone has...even in the "proper" habitat and range by the experts. Go for it....
Well, in Cuba and Florida, IBWO's seem to have fed on pines, and there's ample evidence of Ivory Bills having a varied diet. The demand for photographs strikes me as disingenuous, since the doubters will just dismiss them and claim they are faked.
I have no particular brief for Steve Sheridan. I have exchanged a couple of emails with him but nothing more. I don't know what to make of his sighting, but I don't think it deserves to be lumped into a category that includes bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster.
More generally, I think the voluminous evidence for the IBWO's survival places the burden of proof on the "skeptics", not the other way round. The skeptics are proceeding from an assumption that the ivory bill is extinct, make conclusory statements, and dismiss evidence to the contrary without examining it in depth or challenging it in a methodical way (Jackson's Auk article is a case in point). This is a faith-based, dogmatic approach, not a skeptical, scientific one.
I am sorry. The burden of proof clearly lies on those who have claimed to have seen it. Show the world proof...a video, photo and repeated clear sightings(not fleeting glimpses) in the same locations by a multitude of observers. This has not happened since the 1940s. If the IBWO survived without detection all these years, it would be a miracle. The skeptics don't have to prove anything. there really is no way to "prove" extinction. That is not the issue. I guess a wooley mammoth could technically still be found in some remote steepe area in Asia that nobody has ever been to or some remote island in the arctic. I think the chances are exceedingly small...just like the claims that the IBWO lives(d) in Indiana.
You're moving the goalposts and imposing a standard that doesn't exist for other species. This is not Calvinball; it's supposed to be objective, scientific inquiry.
There is ample evidence -- video, albeit poor and at least open to challenge, multiple sightings by knowledgeable and experienced people, most of whom are very familiar with pileateds; in some instances, there has been more than one person present. The sound recordings have been supported by spectrographic analysis. Again, this is not conclusive proof, and perhaps none of these things taken alone would be persuasive, but taken as a whole, this amounts to a good deal more than a preponderance of the evidence.
The sound recordings and the multiple good sightings (not to mention the feather found in Florida in the '60s) are, if anything, more convincing than a mere photograph, which could easily be dismissed as a hoax, just as the Lewis photos were. I'm not saying I'm convinced those photos were genuine, just that the skeptics rejected them out of hand, based on what strike me as conclusory statements about the positioning of the bird.
The skeptics have nothing but the presumption that the Ivory Bill went extinct in the '40s.
Well, in Cuba and Florida, IBWO's seem to have fed on pines, and there's ample evidence of Ivory Bills having a varied diet. The demand for photographs strikes me as disingenuous, since the doubters will just dismiss them and claim they are faked.
Not if they're good, particularly if it's a video.
From another post: There is ample evidence -- video, albeit poor and at least open to challenge, multiple sightings by knowledgeable and experienced people, most of whom are very familiar with pileateds; in some instances, there has been more than one person present. The sound recordings have been supported by spectrographic analysis. Again, this is not conclusive proof, and perhaps none of these things taken alone would be persuasive, but taken as a whole, this amounts to a good deal more than a preponderance of the evidence.
How about getting just one more poor video? I'd believe it then.
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