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Ever since the Cornell and Auburn Ivorybill searches closed down the number of sighting claims showing up in my email dropped to a trickle (maybe 2-3 per year). Oddly, this last week several such claims arrived to my email one after another, from disparate sources. Unfortunately none were particularly credible, convincing, or significant, and per usual, a couple were pretty clearly PIWOs. With that said, other than some FB sites, I barely follow any social media anymore so do feel free to keep sending along claims that you find at such pages, which I may miss, if they have any ring of authenticity — I appreciate being apprised of them, even if I don't post about them here…. and the thing I’m always on the lookout for is a series of reports/claims suddenly appearing at different media, maybe same week or month, from the same locale (such as a specific county of a given state) — that could be interesting, were it ever to happen — i.e., completely independent reports showing up contemporaneously from different individuals on Reddit, Twitter, and Instagram or the like, but in same area.
Traffic at the blog spiked up again currently, so not sure if that has anything to do with these various claims popping up, or if it is solely due to Rachel Webster’s claims and pics over at Matt Courtman’s ‘Mission Ivorybill’….
I’ve seen 2 of Rachel’s presentations, and while overall I’m agnostic on her claims, I haven't found her presented evidence persuasive (indeed have problems with much of it). Am doubtful her latest video shows an IBWO, but won't run through various possibilities, as quite an array of suggestions by others have already been made (Matt has sent the video/screen-grabs to Chuck Hunter and I'd likely opt for whatever viewpoint he favors... would be flabbergasted if he, or any other truly-skilled, objective, experienced North American field birder said, 'Oh wow, that looks like an Ivory-billed Woodpecker'.... what it looks like is yet more embarrassment!). On the positive side, her site of focus is also in central Louisiana, close to other active searchers.
p.s.... I don't fault Rachel for stepping into the Ivorybill lion's den to present what she has, while admitting it is NOT definitive evidence of IBWOs... I do fault any who would view her stuff and leap joyfully to the conclusion that it is clear evidence for IBWOs.
Will add that when Rachel's talk was announced I was under the impression she would be discussing her coming PhD. dissertation work, but turns out her 'plan' has not yet been approved, so now am not confident this proposed work will even be approved or carried out as described (at University of North Texas). But she should know soon.
Much of this is where I miss Bill Pulliam so much, because he had the patience to methodically/objectively work through all sorts of evidence and point out the problems with it one-by-one; I don’t have that energy, nor even desire, after almost 20 years of blogging here and often debating in backchannels (but resolving nothing). I suspect Bill though would have had a heyday of tearing to shreds so much of what has been put forth as IBWO “evidence” in the last 5 years or so, while shaking his head -- as an eBird reviewer, trained scientist, and long-time serious compiler/birder with one foot in the conventional birding arena, Bill would fully understand the ridicule/mockery now often heaped upon the IBWO community (that we've brought upon ourselves)… so much of what has been advanced in recent times could be called pretend science or pseudoscience, amateur-hour science, imaginary science, junk science, cargo-cult science, take your pick. But, importantly, Bill would also note the many intriguing bits here and there that are less-explicable or dismissible — one glimmer of hope certainly is some of the drone video from the Latta group (including 2 birds I have difficulty perceiving as anything other than IBWOs), and it would’ve been great to get his frame-by-frame analysis of that.
Anyway, apparently Pileated photos and inadequate claims will continue to flow in despite summer being a slow time for IBWO searching. Honestly, with next summer being the ridiculous 20th anniversary of this blog, I gotta wonder if the 2024-5 winter season won’t be my last for covering this time-consuming, circular, frustrating, thumb-twiddling story, unless the necessary evidence is delivered. (Of course, by then, IF Donald is somehow elected Fuhrer in November I’ll probably be relegated to a cattle-car and concentration camp somewhere in Idaho anyway; while Donald gleefully sets about replacing whatever is left of southern forest and swamp with more of his cherished concrete, asphalt, and glass... or alternatively, mowing everything down for more golf courses).
And one last point, that really should hardly need to be said by now: folks, if you're headed into the woods to look for Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, PRACTICE taking pics/video with your smartphone ahead of time!... practice, practice, PRACTICE, on flying crows, raptors, grackles, jays, woodpeckers, etc. over and over again (and then some more!), until grabbing your phone and snapping shots is second nature, almost a subconscious reflex. Frankly... you won't likely get an Ivory-billed Woodpecker photo -- they'll be too high up to capture well on a smartphone! -- but you'll get good enough pics of other birds that you 'think' are IBWOs, to ID what they really are!
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5 comments:
The Saluda event coincided with another independent sighting, decent and posted on FB, from nearby Batesburg-Leesville, which I shared.
I've worked closely with Rachel for about two years. Her video has multiple birds. Some field marks are measurable-- long neck, wing-to-body, and of course distance. People who have attempted to ID the birds have said tufted titmouse, great crested flycatcher, robin, PIWO, other woodpeckers, IBWO. Of course, some of them are wrong. I will be working and posting on this, and if you have an objective blog, perhaps you will share the results. I will measure.
Your last suggestion of smartphone use disregards all the time and research I have offered on headcams with long lenses. I have shared this with you. I have no choice for the objective reader than to state that this man (cyberthrush) does not like me ever since he called the Saluda event a hoax and I defended it. The data is separate from the personality (Nicholson). This extends to "cyberthrush" ignoring good research (including the 587 Hz paper on BioRxiv), and unfortunately this makes his blog not what he claims... THE blog. Sorry but true-- you deserve this. I have no problem defending my work. I am a veteran professional in the natural sciences and you owe me an apology.
Good blog entry. I concur with your evaluation of the current evidence. 20 years is a long time to pursue this subject with no more than what amounts to 'intereting' ambiguous distant drone footage at best.
Oh my….
1) John I neither like or dislike you, but don’t like weak science (be it in medicine, psychology, biology, physics, etc.). And I NEVER called the Saluda story a hoax (did say I couldn’t 100% rule that out); in fact when another person on FB DID call it a hoax I wrote that I thought that was an overstatement and that it most likely fell into a different category, NOT hoax. And it’s not so easy to separate data from the individual directly generating it; you are only a go-between, a secondary (not primary) source, essentially passing hearsay along, even if it includes data you analyze from material provided to you.
2) I didn’t “ignore” your 587 Hz research; I reluctantly responded to it here — to which you had little response, except to tell everyone ‘go read the paper’ for yourself — the same basic response you gave to critics over at BirdForum who scoffed at its contents — you don’t seem to understand that people are criticizing the paper because they HAVE read it! You think some are confused or misunderstanding the paper but even if that were so, it is not their problem in understanding, it is your problem in communication.
3) I did link to your original camera-recommendation paper, just didn’t link to your later revised version, because by then I’d seen people making various recommendations and had no idea/opinion which was best (nor did I have confidence any of them would work well on a rapidly flying bird; and for a bird at a nest or roost site, which is what is needed, any number of cameras will suffice). But sure, I hope you passed along your head-cam choice to Saluda searchers…
4) You have this silly resentment of my title “THE blog….” — I maintain the descriptor simply as a reminder (especially for new readers) that while all other bloggers devoted to this topic fell by the wayside I’m still here, perhaps stupidly, trying to see this story to its end. I think David Luneau’s site is the ONLY other one still around (unless Bobby Harrison still has one), and his is not in a blog format. Interest in blogs has greatly diminished over time, in favor of social media, so being “THE blog” about anything isn’t exactly an honor.
How are your 2 blogs doing these days?
motionhealth.blogspot.com
bestdriver.blogspot.com
And you seem to have either been banned or made unwelcome at the 2 largest IBWO Facebook groups — I at least let you have your say here.
By the way there are sites that specialize in having truly skilled/experienced birders identify birds in poor photos — you should try to get one of those sites, or those birders, to attempt IDing Rachel’s birds (people who don’t have your ingrained biases going into the matter — I suspect we may already know how you will analyze the pics).
Again if you think your research is SOOO good, you should seek a PhD. or University-level collaborator to work and co-author with you — they love to pad their resumes and ought be knocking down your door for the chance to get in on such ground-breaking work.
Lastly John, Cornell, Nature Conservancy, USFWS, & Auburn worked hard to take seriously the prospect of IBWO persistence… if anything, you owe THEM an apology for bringing even more scorn to the Ivory-bill debate than it carried previously… to the point that respected collaborators are mostly afraid to touch the subject and sully their name.
MikeD: I disagree with your “no more than what amounts to…” characterization… here and there are various good pieces of evidence… the problem in the IBWO arena is like the old joke that 98% of lawyers give the other 2% a bad name”…. 98% of IBWO evidence is lousy enough to give the other 2% an undeservedly bad rap. ;)
My statement stands.
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