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"If the only prayer you say in your entire life is 'Thank you,' that will suffice."
-- Meister Eckhart
To all you readers out there, at this time, in this illustrious Year-of-the-Ivorybill, wishes for a HAPPY, HEALTHY, & GRATEFUL THANKSGIVING!....
(...and may we all get what we're hoping for for Christmas! ; - )
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Just out of curiosity I now check eBay once-a-month-or-so just to see what "Ivory-billed Woodpecker" items might be showing up there (usually mostly books and art works of one sort or another), and on a recent check the item that caught my eye is a copy of the "Brinkley Argus" newspaper in which the "original announcement" of the IBWO "in its hometown" was announced -- asking starting bid, $5.00... ahhh, yes, capitalism thrives in America! (from the same town that brings you Ivory-bill haircuts and Ivory-bill burgers) -- actually, it looks like a possible great souvenir for some lucky reader of this blog... and hey, Christmas is right around the corner!
Try this link (maybe half-way down the page) for a look-see, or look it up yourself on eBay.
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While we're biding time here's a link to a fairly interesting (and longish) article from The American Scholar (Summer 2005 issue) on the Ivory-bill and the Macaulay Library of natural sounds at Cornell that may be of some interest:
http://journalism.nyu.edu/portfolio/narechania/hearing.html
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Lately, I've been reading a lot of material on two disparate subjects that inspire mystical thoughts for me: mathematics and nature/wilderness. The passages below just might be evocative for current Ivory-bill searchers and come from an anthology I only recently discovered, "The Soul Unearthed -- Celebrating Wildness and Spiritual Renewal Through Nature," edited by Cass Adams:
"It is only in the forest that I realize how many rooted structures exist inside of me, and it is in the forest now, with my breath lifting in billowing spirals in the cold air, that I am suddenly released into the miracle of small things -- a bird's movement on a branch, the sound of water still dripping from yesterday's rainstorm. In the forest everything in the mind can be given away, so that the heart can be open to the intense concentration that natural objects demand. Through this concentration where nothing exists but the object itself, enormous energy opens out through the woodland silhouette." -- David Whyte
"We have become estranged from the earth, from our bodies, and from the other beings who inhabit the earth. There is great fear and misunderstanding about wilderness. In general, we lack a familiar and close relationship to the very source of life that sustains us... Wilderness leads us back to our center. Even the knowledge that wild places exist consoles and frees the human spirit." -- Cass Adams
"Mystery, and certainly, humility are not virtues that contemporary culture supports... Wilderness, on the other hand, supports and cultivates a taste for embracing and even finding strength in mystery and humility... Do you want to transform your life? My recommendation is a simple one: Go out in the wilds, take off your shoes, sink your feet well into the ground, and be touched by mystery." -- Steven Harper
....and tomorrow, maybe something on prime numbers... but probably not.
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This notice comes late today from Laura Erickson's birdblog -- (my reaction to it is, "well, duhhhhhh!!," but others will no doubt find it of more significance) :
"LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS—After reviewing evidence of the ivory-billed woodpecker gathered in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in April 2004, the Bird Records Committee of the Arkansas Audubon Society has voted to change the status of the bird in Arkansas from ''extirpated'' to ''present''.
Max Parker, longtime curator for the Arkansas Audubon Society, received on June 17, 2005, verifying documentation for the extraordinary record from a member of the research team. The documentation was studied at length by all members of the Arkansas Bird Records Committee before the record was accepted."
You can read Laura's full post at:
http://birdwatching.birderblog.com/?v=11-18-05#11-18-05_170310.txt
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Among the many folks out searching for Ivory-bills right now is Mike Collins (not associated with Cornell, and therefore more free to report whatever he so chooses) who is exploring the general Pearl River area (not Arkansas), believing he has previously heard IBWO near the Stennis Space Center, as have others. You can follow his updates at:
http://www.fishcrow.com
Despite the failure of the previous LSU search in the Pearl many (including Van Remsen who headed up that endeavor) believe it still holds great promise -- I personally always thought the Bogue Chitto area in particular was a likely home for Ivory-bills and was admittedly surprised by the 2002 failure to turn them up there. Could still be a little while though for the leaves to entirely fall from the trees permitting good visibility, and keep in mind too that Ivory-bill courting/breeding activity could likely begin early in the new year.
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Once again Birdchick Blog has another fun/interesting post today, this time on the recent Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival (you may want to read the whole thing), but including this noteworthy passage on David Luneau's video, for what it's worth:
"Tim Gallagher gave a presentation and signing at the RGV Fest too. Watching his footage of the Luneau video was a very different experience than having watched it on the internet or tv news where it's blown up to grainy proportions. Having watched it on a large screen at regular speed, it makes much more sense as to why this is an ivory-billed woodpecker and not an albinistic pileated. Whether or not you believe the bird in the footage is an ivory-bill, I will tell you this, it is for sure not a pileated. It doesn't have the flight pattern a pileated does -- this isn't someone speaking from behind a computer, this is someone who has considered a pileated a favorite bird since age seven and has watched it for hours in the field. If anything you could argue that the footage is an albinistic wood duck from the way the wings flap and the speed that the bird in question leaves the tree--it doesn't have the flight pattern of a woodpecker at all. What keeps it from being a wood duck is that you can see the bird clinging to the side of a tree before it takes off."
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With the lull in the news, and at the risk of beating a dead palomino, I'll just reiterate a few major points (for the umpteenth time):
1) The Big Woods area of AR. is about the size of the state of Rhode Island -- nothing too unusual about not being able to find a bird in a (mostly wooded) area that vast (depends how many there are) -- heck, half the time I can't find my car in the mall parking lot! And in the 80 years prior to Pearl River there were never any truly large-scale, organized, meaningful, well-funded searches for the bird; NONE.
2) ...nor anything whatsoever unusual about failure to capture the bird on film. Without finding an active roost or nest hole this will remain difficult at best (although the sheer number of searchers running around with cameras/video of course increases the chances of at least more fuzzy shots).
3) at least 16 people claim to have seen/identified the bird -- all of whom know about, and are experienced viewing Pileated Woodpeckers. Furthermore, most of the sightings occurred out in the open, unlike some past sightings that have involved interference from leaves or tree limbs. (...As I've said before, if the sighters' names included "Sibley," "Kaufman," "Dunne," "Ehrlich,", etc. we wouldn't even be having this debate, no matter how brief the glimpses, because rightly or wrongly, those who write books or are mass media "names" are automatically granted credibility not afforded to others.) Numerous bird identifications, including those used in official counts, are based on equally brief looks -- only people's biasing, preconceived notions of Ivory-bill extinction cause them to challenge all such sightings.
4) For several sighters SIZE was one of the very first, most striking features of the bird in question -- this is significant since other field marks can be missed with a bird in flight (although the key trailing white wing edge, the one fieldmark people are incessantly told to focus on, was reported by most sighters).
5) Credible reports of Ivory-bills have been made every decade since the 40's (indeed, since at least the 20's). It is the pronouncement of "60 years without being seen" that is, and always has been, a completely unproven, unwarranted claim, that again biases people ahead of time to (against) any new reports.
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Okay, I bill this blog as "All Ivory-bills, All the time," but for the first time ever am going momentarily OFF-topic to refer folks to a post I thought too wonderful not to pass along, on another marvelous bird, the California Condor -- this post from 'birdchick' today (Tues., Nov 15), concerns an injured Ca. Condor in rehab in Minnesota of all places, and includes some great photos along with the storyline... Enjoy!
http://www.birdchick.com/2005/11/california-condor-at-raptor-center.html
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If you haven't already seen it, there are short blurbs/bios of people involved in the Arkansas search (with nice quotes) available at:
http://www.nature.org/ivorybill/team/
(...and geee, despite what skeptics might have you thinking, most of these folks even have credentials, college degrees, experience, and appear non-hallucinatory!!)
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A couple of posts back I made mention of forest 'dead timber densities' and IBWO 'carrying capacities;' if you want to see more data on such factors (densities of large-diameter trees, snags, and dead wood) in the pertinent Arkansas areas, check out the following site that provides some graphic habitat inventory maps based on recent research:
http://www.lmvjv.org/IBWO_habitat_inventory_&_assessment.htm
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This short note from David Luneau's website today:
" 'NOVA ScienceNow' will be featuring the IBWO as one of the TOP 10 science stories of 2005 in a program that will run sometime in January. Keep an eye on your local PBS listings."
...for any birding story, even including re-discovery of the Ivory-bill, to make a top 10 list of all possible science stories for a given year is pretty remarkable!!
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After the initial announcement of Arkansas Ivory-bills I attempted to estimate how many IBWOs might remain in the entire American Southeast, based on distribution of previous reports, habitat availability, time passed since Tanner's study, possible breeding and death rates, and... intuition. As best I can recall the numbers I arrived at ranged from a low estimate of ~45 birds to a high of possibly ~125. These numbers were based on such imprecise and hard-to-quantify data and assumptions, that I presumed they would be scoffed at as absurdly optimistic.
Now, some folks on a BirdForum thread, using dead timber density and other 'carrying capacity' factors as guides, are throwing out possible Ivory-bill estimates of well over 100 birds for just AR. and LA. alone; thus, I'm a bit more heartened that in the end my figures might just prove to be moderate or even conservative, rather than insanely optimistic.
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Just a few things I learned all on my own, when I wasn't in school studying stupid stuff:
1. Birds are pretty smart critters (...and corollary, humans ain't as smart as they invariably think they are).
2. Birds know the outdoors and their own territories a whole lot better than humans do, or ever could.
3. Birds have appendages called "wings" that allow them to move swiftly, on a moment's notice, at will, in any direction, far away, to evade predators or detection.
4. Creatures that get shot at don't much like it, and over time learn to avoid the creatures doing the shooting.
5. Though the woods "are lovely dark and deep," they can also be vast, dense, inhospitable, poorly-accessible, and difficult to traverse without making lots and lots of noise.
6. Living things have a tremendous will/drive to live and reproduce, and adaptive individuals virtually always survive well past the time silly humans think they're all gone.
7. It can be difficult to make generalizations about species because individual members are so variable and dynamic.
8. Extinction is forever, and that's a LONG, LONG time -- one ought be mighty gosh darn positive before ever declarin' it, or you just might look like a fool.
9. The Universe is positively brimming with improbabilities.
10. Children's intuition (before it is extinguished) is right just about as often as grown-up science is.
....just a few late-night thoughts; think it's my naptime now.
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A bit of Jerry Jackson as we head into the weekend -- Back in his 1989 (pre-Pearl River and Big Woods) report to the Government USF&W, after extensive study of Ivory-bill natural history and searching, IBWO expert Dr. Jerome Jackson wrote the following (not all readers will know the specific cases he makes reference to, but you'll understand the gist, and a near identical passage appears in his current book as well):
"Perhaps we can dismiss the photographs that George Lowery presented to the ornithological community. Perhaps we can dismiss the sightings reported by Whitney Eastman. Perhaps we can dismiss the sightings of John Dennis. Perhaps we can explain away the Dennis tape recordings that were analyzed by Hardy. Maybe there is a miniscule chance that the recording made by Reynard isn’t of an Ivory-bill. Perhaps we can dismiss the response to tape recordings that were heard by Robert Manns, Malcolm Hodges, and myself or the birds heard by Fred Sibley and Ted Davis. But the list goes on and on -- right up to the present. If each of these observations has any probability at all of having been real, these probabilities add up. It is unlikely that all of these reports are misidentifications."
Additionally, Jackson concluded the following regarding possible ivory-bill locales: "...the most likely states in which ivory-bills might still exist are, in order of likelihood: Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas would be next, and Alabama and Arkansas would be behind them."
Hmmm... Arkansas last? After years of study was Jackson just flat-out wrong, or did he have it right and the now sought-after AR. birds are in fact just one of the smaller populations of ivory-bills out there to be discovered???
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Just a few thoughts about the Symposium abstracts previously referenced:
The abstracts are interesting, but often only hint at the details that may have been covered in the full presentations. As could be expected many of the abstracts are more indicative of what we DON'T fully know or understand about Ivory-bills than what we do know.
Here is one quote from the abstracts I throw out only to indicate that among principals of the search, unlike the constant armchair debaters over the internet, there is LITTLE doubt what the Luneau video shows:
"Due to technical imperfections, the woodpecker in the Luneau video offers a challenging identification puzzle but comparisons with images of Pileated Woodpecker in flight and a reenactment with models of Ivory-billed Woodpecker and Pileated Woodpecker demonstrate the videoed bird is indeed an Ivory-billed
Woodpecker. "
I am still troubled somewhat by the acoustic data; so far as I can tell there is still no indication that the "kents" recorded in the Big Woods have been compared to the 'toots' of a Red-breasted Nuthatch, the bird Tanner (and I) believe most resembles the Ivory-bill sound (albeit not as loud); only comparisons to the White-breasted cousin are mentioned (this I think is a major lapse if it has not been done). As far as Blue Jay calls go, I see no great problem with the possibility of the taped kent calls emanating from them, since this simply begs the question of why are Blue Jays in the Big Woods apparently producing this call so much more often than they do throughout most of their range. Either this IS a case of mimicry or it is some sort of strange vocal co-evolution in which case one must explain why do Big Woods Blue Jays make the call much more frequently than say Blue Jays in Chicago, Illinois. (Indeed, how many calls do Blue Jays make that are neither part of their normal daily repertoire nor instances of mimicry??? -- does anyone have a clue...)
Finally, I will quote just one abstract below in its entirety, because it so strongly mirrors the conclusions I too have been approaching over the last few years:
"The role of human depredations in the decline of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker"
-- Noel F.R. Snyder
"In virtually all modern accounts, the endangerment of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker has been attributed mainly to (1) extreme foraging specialization, leading to a crucial dependency of individuals on vast areas of pristine woodlands to obtain sufficient food, and (2) the logging of nearly all virgin forests in the species' original range. However, rigorously persuasive evidence for the ivory-bill being an extreme foraging specialist appears to be lacking, and the numerous reports of early abundance of the species across its original range are difficult to reconcile with a dependency of individuals on vast areas of mature forests. Although the ivory-bill did exhibit sparse populations and a frequent close association with remnant virgin forests as it approached extinction, these characteristics may have been due mainly tofactors other than food stress. In particular, direct human depredations may have been more important than habitat modification and food scarcity in producing the species' decline. The loss of certain Florida populations to zealous specimen collecting has long been acknowledged. But in addition, there are other populations for which evidence plausibly suggests extirpation mainly due to subsistence, curiosity, and sport killings. The high vulnerability of the ivory-bill to human depredations was often noted in historical accounts, and no substantial regions are known that were free of such threats. In many regions major ivory-bill declines clearly took place before logging operations were initiated, suggesting that habitat destruction was at most a secondary stress, whatever the primary stress may have been. Logging must surely have greatly lowered the carrying capacity of most woodlands for the species, but not necessarily to the point where food supplies were inadequate to support any ivory-bills. Instead, logging's most significant detrimental role may have been the facilitation of human depredations on remnant populations, especially by providing much improved access to formerly remote regions, a role increasingly recognized as crucial in the current disappearance of vulnerable wildlife species from tropical forests around the world."
-- If 'human depredation' was in fact a MAJOR cause of the IBWO's decline than its end in the 30's would have given the species an extra 20 years to stabilize and hang on while waiting for 2nd growth forest to recover in the 50's; 20 years of crucial 'breathing' time.
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Abstracts (14 pages worth) of the presentations from the recent large woodpecker ecology symposium in Brinkley are now available (in pdf form) at:
http://nature.org/ivorybill/current/art15996.html
...may have more to say about them after I've read through them myself.
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Yesterday's USA Today contained a somewhat textbook-like article on the Ivory-bill :
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2005-11-09-ivory-billed-woodpecker_x.htm
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