— A Reverse Midas Touch —

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Once again just not seeing much in-depth discussion in serious birding circles of the recently-submitted USFWS “evidence” — demonstrating how utterly exhausted of this debate most experienced birders are (it is verrry time-consuming to work through this data). There’s been several brief comments on the Arkansas bird listserv (which not too surprisingly David Luneau got going… and all focused on Mark Michaels’ video), and a bit of chatter on other listservs, but overall not much. By now the ‘believer’ community is seen as so cultish, so biased/delusional, so bonkers even, that I don’t know how we ever get the best, most experienced birders out there to return to the table and peruse such debatable evidence? Again, essentially NON-disputable photo/video is required.

And I fully understand this take, since I too am trying to avoid getting dragged into endless conversations that I know to be unresolvable… but my opinion is not worth diddly anyway… There are 100s of truly excellent field birders in this country, dozens each in S.C., La., and Arkansas alone. The current sort of “evidence” needs to be rigorously-reviewed by a dozen or more of them for their opinion (though I think I know what they’ll say). I’m not much interested in what Facebookers, Twitterers, weekend birders, duckhunters, backyard bird feeders, most of the public, nor bloggers like myself have to say about the latest data — I’d like to hear from the best of the best-and-most-experienced observers, which seems unlikely to happen. Worse yet, I’m not even sure that if one of those “experts” did find something truly intriguing in a recent piece of video, they could even bring themselves to say so publicly. Within birding, the IBWO topic has become radioactive and, for one's reputation, has taken on a reverse Midas touch.

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ADDENDUM:

While bopping around the Web I keep seeing the Michaels’ film show up different places BUT only in its original form, and viewers being disappointed. You HAVE TO watch the zoomed and slowed down versions, and preferably on a large screen. Viewing only the original clip or on a small mobile device will not lend you the interesting features. (I might say more about it later, though I'd prefer to just find a good discussion of it somewhere and link to that.)