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Generally, I hope to post this summer (maybe remainder of year) primarily only when there is something truly significant regarding ongoing searches or new evidence (and not anticipating that will be very often)… but, will occasionally touch base on other matters:
1) The National Aviary pre-print has received very widespread coverage in the popular press, and am surprised it has not had more extensive, detailed attention in places like BirdForum.net, BirdChat, ID Frontiers, or other listservs; there’s been some attention and criticism, just not as much of a deep-dive as one might expect (indeed, probably as much mockery/sarcasm on social media as serious discussion). Similarly, there must be at least a half-dozen significant birders/ornithologists, who have not weighed in on the paper. Again, don’t know if all this relative silence is because they are mulling over the research (perhaps even busy writing a counter-response to it, though not likely unless it makes it into a journal), or because they find the whole subject so preposterous at this point as to be unworthy of a response??? I’ll reiterate missing Bill Pulliam’s voice (deceased), as he would’ve undoubtedly had his own analysis of it.
There has been some quickie responses and back-and-forth at the main Facebook Ivory-bill site, where things are rarely resolved. Now with over 2900 followers that site is taking on the flavor of former BirdForum threads from years ago, which often devolved into food fights. On the good side, it’s nice to see greatly increased interest in the IBWO, and good also to see skeptics come on board the site (which at one time was largely believers preaching to the choir, but now gets at least some varied views and pushback to a lot of shallow ideas); on the downside, the crappy FB platform makes the discussions very disjointed and difficult to follow in a logical manner. And with so many new people coming on board the redundancy/repetition can be tiresome; same issues, questions, thoughts, ideas, debates, etc. etc. continually being re-addressed; sometimes leaving a feeling of walking endlessly in circles and getting nowhere. But for all the chaff and rehashed material one must follow the site for the occasional nuggets that do pop up.
2) Re-iterating again that the flurry of recent IBWO publicity is generating lots of new claims and old reports (almost every week in social media!) from inexperienced observers, with little credibility, (while granting, anything is possible). As I emphasized before, the downside of all this fresh fervor (usually going nowhere), is to convert more and more agnostic folks into skeptics; so just be judicious in what you take seriously out there. It can be a minefield!
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