— Report and Suggestions From A Searcher —

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Soon the leaves will be off the trees and we’ll be headed into prime winter IBWO search season. John Williams, “Motiheal” on the Ivory-bill Researchers’ Forum, asked me to direct folks to two of his previous long posts there that detail a couple of his past trip experiences and ideas for search methods, focusing on tape playbacks.

The posts are here:

http://www.ibwo.net/forum/showthread.php?p=6985#post6985

http://www.ibwo.net/forum/showthread.php?p=6776#post6776

[Note: Due to some glitch I actually have a great deal of difficulty opening the Forum site these days; IF you too experience problems accessing the site or these two particular links I won’t be able to help you, other than to say keep trying at random times.]

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-- Choctawhatchee Redux --

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Mark Michaels reports on a claim from the Choctawhatchee:

https://projectcoyoteibwo.com/2018/08/20/the-choctawhatchee-a-detour/
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-- IBWOs in Your Backyard or Den --

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Several of you already have received Iowan Dean Hurliman’s handsome, hand-made life-size craftings of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. He recently wrote me to explain that he would likely only complete 8 more of these beauties, and will be looking for homes for them.

He then sent along the following message that he requested I print verbatim, which I am happy to do:

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

“And then the man he steps right up to the microphone

And says at last just as the time bell rings

Goodnight, now it’s time to go home

And he makes it fast with one more thing”

       “Sultans of Swing”  — Mark Knopfler

Last Call For Free Flying Ersatz IBWs

Currently, I have 8 IBWs ready for assembly and paint.  However, after August, I’ll no longer have internet access.  So if you want a bird—scroll back to Sept. 2015 for particulars.  If you’re tardy—call or write.

Thanks gracious ct for the use of your blog.  Because of it, over 50 of my IBW carvings will be on display in private hands and public institutions where they may play a small part in a greater appreciation for our beleaguered natural world.

These final words from poet Dylan Thomas are directed to the undaunted believers and searchers.  But most of all, to the “Lord God Bird”, itself: 

    Do not go gentle into that good night…

            Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dean S. Hurliman

Burlington, Iowa

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Here is the Sept. 2015 post to which Dean refers (and which includes his email for contact purposes).

https://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2015/09/ibwo-wood-carvings-wow.html

Dean sent me a list of the public sites/institutions that have already received these gorgeously-crafted pieces, and it’s thrilling to know that such life-like visages will be keeping the IBWO alive in peoples’ minds long after this saga is over.

I certainly hope his last 8 treasures find fitting homes as well…

And with only 8 available I recommend contacting him soon for all the specifics.

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ADDENDUM:  At the very end of the below post you can see two of Dean's beauties that were received recently by a couple of intrepid Mississippi searchers:
https://ibwos.blogspot.com/2018/09/walking-melkors-road-11-september-2018.html

-- A Summary From Louisiana --

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Mark Michaels summarizes 9 years (thus far) of IBWO searching in central Louisiana (Part 1):

https://projectcoyoteibwo.com/2018/06/29/evidence-part-1-project-coyote-2009-2018/

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-- Animatronic Delight --

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In case it's the best we ever get, may as well post this ;) :

http://tinyurl.com/yakrjj3h

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-- Jackson Roe in Arkansas --

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Some will remember almost 10 years ago a young Jackson Roe and his father searching for IBWOs in the Big Woods area.  Jackson recently notified me that he is back at it in Wattensaw and has renewed blogposting here:

http://ibwosearch.blogspot.com/?view=classic

He was particularly interested in getting opinions on some trailcam photos of 2 distant birds in his 5/29 entry. As usual not good enough for conclusive identification, though I don't think they're Ivory-bills; but feel free to send Jackson your own thoughts, questions, ideas.

By the way, I'd be interested to hear who else is still doing any regular searching (and how often) in the Big Woods area (perhaps Mike Brown???), since I no longer hear much from that area at all, though I'm sure some individuals do at least sporadically venture there.

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-- Louisiana Doings --

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You can read Mark Michaels' latest encounter with a woodpecker in central Louisiana (with more to come later)… and, with a person-of-interest here:

https://projectcoyoteibwo.com/2018/04/28/sunset-sighting-april-27-2018/

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-- Mike Collins' Latest --

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Mike Collins has a new piece out on the use of drones to search Ivory-bill habitat:
http://www.mdpi.com/2504-446X/2/1/11/htm

(...haven't yet thoroughly read it myself or perhaps I'd say more)

Mike has uploaded various drone flight examples over different areas to YouTube, including this example from the Choctawhatchee region:



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— A Trip Down (bad) Memory Lane —

Wow, there are so many episodes (for lack of a better term!) going back over the whole IBWO saga in just the last dozen years! I see over on Facebook they have brought up the “tmguy” or “Bill Smith” story from very early on. I don’t participate on Facebook (for all the reasons despisers of FB normally give), but I’ll try to offer a little off-the-cuff back-story here — I say “off-the-cuff” because I used to have quite a few notes on “tmguy” which I’m now too lazy to try to find, so will simply go on memory, which I hope is mostly right (but no guarantees):

Here’s the photo (he actually had a couple of photos, but this was the main one) that bought him his 15 minutes of fame over 12 years ago (OK, actually the controversy went on for quite awhile, though most everyone concluded this was a painted decoy or model of some sort, in an orange tree no less?):

“tmguy” stood for “that magic guy” because, as a hobby he was a stage magician; his full name was “William Frank Smith” and he emerged out-of-the-blue to claim many encounters with IBWOs in Florida. I think he was from the Lady Lake area of Florida, and at least some his claims/sightings (NEVER-ever verified) may have come from the Green Swamp area — though I may be confusing him with another claimant in that regard.

I communicated with him a few times, never getting very detailed or satisfactory answers; always a noticeable bit of evasiveness, though he’d stick to his basic storyline. He did seem to have some sincere interest and knowledge of wildlife in general, and while I could give him little credibility on his IBWO tales I was willing to look at the book he promised and promised and promised for 2+ years that would detail his Ivorybill exploits (including more pics) — the book of course never appeared; for a long time he had limp excuses for its delay, but eventually he just faded away after the beating he took online.

Even then I continued to follow his online behavior on aquarium forum sites that he frequented — he actually owned/ran an aquarium shop for awhile (in Tampa perhaps?, before it went out-of-business) — his fish comments were almost always reasonable, intelligent, helpful, upfront… but of course one can be an honest, upfront person I s’pose in one area of their life, and a total prankster/doofus in some other area. 8-/

To my utter amazement I just checked and much of his original site is still up! (though most of the pictures are long gone):

http://billismad.tripod.com

...note too, his URL was "bill is mad dot com" -- which I dare say many of us began taking literally!

That's about all I recall at the moment; if I think of more of pertinence or run across my old notes I might add more here later.

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....on a side-note:  I don't know how many folks have had difficulty bringing up the Ivory-bill Researchers Forum site recently (I've had major difficulty with it for over 3 weeks), but I contacted one of the proprietors this week, so they're at least looking into it (I'm not sure how aware of a problem they even were?).

In fact if any reader here has been successfully loading the site, with no problems, the last 3 weeks I'd be curious to hear what browser you are using, what time of day, and are you using mobile or desktop...

-- Nice Stoddard Tribute --

Herb Stoddard's claims for Ivory-bills in Georgia in the 1950's are among the last ones that some people take seriously. ICYMI, hat tip to Mark Michaels for pointing out a new account of Stoddard in an ejournal freely available here (the Stoddard piece beginning on pg. 38):

https://cloud.3dissue.com/19646/20503/28091/eJournal/html5/index.html

It all kind of reminded me of a post I did almost 6 years ago that I'll re-link to for entertainment:

https://ivorybills.blogspot.com/2012/02/and-back-to-georgia.html

[...on a sidenote, some folks have emailed me asking about the Ivory-bill Researchers' Forum being down -- I don't know anymore than you do, except this has happened before, and it's usually a temporary glitch, so just keep checking back on it.]