— End of Year and An Offbeat Recommendation —

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Suspect I may post again before end of year, but in case not, will take this opportunity to wish all a happy holiday season and new year... after what has been one of the wackiest years yet! with hyperbolic claims and avian Rorschach tests, inadequate to convince skeptics, continuing to ardently spring forth. I do hope USFWS will make a 'final' decision early next year (in either direction) and we can quit arguing over that Agency and just focus on searches.

Finally, a bit of an odd recommendation today. I suggested some books in the last post and will mention one more, though not pertaining directly to the IBWO. One of my loves is mathematics, and one favorite (but lesser-known) math expositor is Jason Rosenhouse (have enjoyed most of his books, and a blog he long ago wrote). Just recently read his 2020 volume, “Games For Your Mind,” all about logic, puzzles, and math philosophy. If you have an inherent interest, and some background, in these topics, which can be dry and tedious but which Rosenhouse treats well, I highly recommend this volume (will help if you already have some familiarity with the names/work of Lewis Carroll, Raymond Smullyan, Alfred Tarski, Bertrand Russell, Gödel, etc.).

Why do I even venture to mention such a book in the context of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker? Because I think actual strict, tight “logic” is often sorely missing in the debate over the IBWO, on the part of both skeptics and believers alike. Chris Haney touches on logic, writing a lot about thought “fallacies” in his book “Woody’s Last Laugh” though that is not the more formal, academic logic that Rosenhouse is addressing (and Rosenhouse touches on both "classical" and "non-classical" or "fuzzy" logic).

Again, this work won’t grab you if you don’t already have an interest in the area, but for those with some (mathematical) background I think this is the best, most accessible treatment of some difficult and rigorous ideas I have seen, and I wish this subject, which can be made fun by its connection to recreational math, was taught more widely and earlier-on in our educational system. To be clear, you will NOT read this book and think at any point, 'oh wow, THAT applies to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker!' but rather simply it may instill a greater appreciation of precise, critical, deductive thinking in general, in place of inductive assumptions and generalizations (...or, contrarily, it may turn you off entirely to the subject of academic/philosophical logic!).

With all that said, and despite the emphasis on 'logic,' I expect the final resolution of the Ivory-bill debate may well also involve a major dose of intuition!

In any event, onward to 2023....

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— Of Birds and Books —

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I don’t generally link to discoveries of rare animals/birds which occur every year because the case of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is so different from, or non-analogous to, most other creatures, and I don’t like to draw too much comparison to other cases. But this latest instance of a found bird species does have a number of interesting parallels, as well as simply being fascinating in its own right:

https://www.audubon.org/news/like-finding-unicorn-researchers-rediscover-black-naped-pheasant-pigeon-bird

And with holiday shopping approaching I was planning (in a couple weeks) to mention a few IBWO books for any on your list who may just now be getting interested in the IBWO. Rather than waiting, I'll go ahead and tack those on here; mentioning only 4 of the now many books that address the Ivory-bill topic:

1)  Jerry Jackson’s classic In Search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker — somewhat dated by now, and missing a lot of info from recent times, but still a good, broad overview of matters from one of the leading experts on the IBWO.

2)  Woody’s Last Laugh by Christopher Haney — recent, and easily the most comprehensive, and in some ways interesting, text on the whole subject; but also a bit of a slog to read; repetitive and somewhat disorganized and pedantic, but chockfull of info and thoughts that no other volume includes in one place; great notes and addenda as well.

3)  Noel Snyder’s The Travails of Two Woodpeckers — an important take from another major scholar of the Ivory-bill, though may be hard to find.

4)  Finally, for getting young people especially, interested in the Ivory-bill, Phillip Hoose’s The Race to Save The Lord God Bird is still a fun and quick read (…again not up-to-date, but a good read).

There are several more recent volumes, especially ones that focus on one or another particular aspect of the IBWO story -- they all make contributions to the subject, but also tend to have certain problems/issues (in my view) -- anyway, for initiation I recommend the above volumes, which I think of as foundational. Probably, even as I write these words there are additional, and important, IBWO books being written, still to come. The story is, most likely, not over (despite what you might hear over, ummm, the internet).

IF, at end of year, you’re looking to give money toward other prospective Ivory-bill-related causes you could consider The National Aviary with its IBWO search project in Louisiana:

https://www.aviary.org

…or, to Matt Courtman’s “Mission Ivorybill” effort in various locales:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-bird-worth-saving-a-fresh-approach?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_campaign=p_cp%20share-sheet&fbclid=IwAR2sWSvGEItOJ-7Q5tv2grih-Uq1Nn5bUb1Th4LPtHaKifqx8dlRyj-FMBM

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-- And Another Paper --

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Over on FB, Chris Sharpe links to this recent journal article focusing on government expenditures toward the IBWO (often a bone of contention):

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ibi.13144

A common issue in IBWO debates is how much money has been spent on the IBWO that could have gone toward the benefit of other, less-debated species. The authors argue, perhaps a bit simplistically, that  “continued expenditure of resources on the species are all exacerbated by prestige and affiliation bias;” i.e., and really to no surprise, the expertise and academic affiliations of a few of the players in this saga have unduly influenced the continuation of the debate (a sort of 'appeal to authority' fallacy), notably within the USFWS (the authors believe the IBWO should be declared extinct). One could almost look through the other end of the prism to say that the reason the IBWO debate is NOT taken seriously by so many is simply because the bulk of IBWO proponents LACK the expertise or academic affiliation which is often considered fundamental — i.e., a lot of noise from a bunch of rank-amateurs (it would be argued) — and that too is a bias of sorts (against those who may actually have excellent bird-identification skills, but have not written books, academic papers, lack PhDs. or academic affiliations, or other name-recognition, etc.).

I suppose the authors are attempting to explain, for those still baffled by it, why this whole debate continues on, but to fault "prestige" in "scientific discourse" seems a bit ill-guided as it is a natural (even logical) "bias" common to most scientific endeavors.

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