-- Cornell... and Christmas --

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Any birders of a certain age grew up revering the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, as America's bastion of excellence in birding and ornithology. One of the more unfortunate consequences of 2 years of Ivorybill debate has been attacks in some quarters on CLO's stature and reputation. Hindsight is 20/20, and clearly Cornell (or associates) have handled some matters poorly, not delivering on certain promises, nor responding quickly or thoroughly to various criticisms lobbed their way. They walk a tightrope in both wanting to hold their cards close, maintaining confidentiality regarding the IBWO search, yet also wishing to retain public support. Over time, questions I've posed to Jerry Jackson, Geoff Hill, and lesser figures, have been answered well and promptly; but fairly simple, straightforward questions I've posed to Cornell, have taken months to answer, or simply gone unanswered... while their mail solicitations to my mailbox for contributions continue to arrive in an uncannily timely manner! ;-)
It was of course Cornell who, in the 1930's, originally brought the Ivory-billed Woodpecker back to the attention of scientists and birders, only to then abandon it when, in a time of war, there seemed no possibility of accomplishing anything for the bird. It is somehow ironic that yet once again Cornell is potentially in a position to fail the species. This amazing bird that brought so much sudden fame to James Tanner has done little since, but bring ridicule and ruin to others crossing paths with it... I still expect Cornell to be vindicated in the end, but the tarnish done to their lustre may take longer to buff up... and that is unfortunate, given all the unqualified good they accomplish for birding and birders.


...On a different note, a reader has requested that I post "gift recommendations" (books or other items) for "Ivory-bill fanatics" for the upcoming holidays. Many readers will already be familiar with these, but for any who aren't I'll just cite some of the more obvious choices:

First though I'll mention that, for those who are into the auction scene, eBay usually has quite an array of Ivory-billed Woodpecker-related items for sale (books, t-shirts, mugs, artwork, etc.) so can be worth checking out here:

http://shop.ebay.com/items/ivory-billed-woodpecker

As far as books, my personal favorite remains Jerome Jackson's "In Search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker." Second, though old (originally published in 1942) and somewhat dry reading as a scientific monograph, I still find James Tanner's short "The Ivory-billed Woodpecker" a fascinating read for anyone both into this bird and into science. Phillip Hoose's "The Race to Save the Lord God Bird" remains a beautifully done and photo-laden volume which came out before all the current hubbub (oddly, it is often promoted as a young person's book, though excellent reading for adults as well). Another favorite from the past is Christopher Cokinos's "Hope Is the Thing With Feathers" with a long, well-written chapter on the Ivory-bill, but also great chapters on four other assumed-extinct bird species. And then of course there are the two most 'current' volumes to emerge, Tim Gallagher's "The Grail Bird" on the Arkansas search, and Geoff Hill's "Ivorybill Hunters" on the Florida search, both exciting but more limited reads. And I suppose I may as well once again mention (for the scientifically-inclined) Noel Snyder's new monograph on the Ivory-bill available online at: http://www.wfvz.org/html/pub_prog.html

Deciding among all these volumes is really a matter of personal preference and interest (and do buy the latest editions of any of them, since new material may have been added over older used copies), since all have positive elements in their favor depending what one is looking for.
Wild bird stores may have other Ivory-bill related gifts/trinkets/crafts for sale. Some of the sites I link to in the blog margin also have IBWO items for sale, and there are other sites around the internet as well with IBWO stuff.

....or, you may just wish to ask for a brand-spanking new videocam recorder, kayak, GPS device, and camo gear, to go look for the bird yourself!
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-- Who Cyberthrush Is... NOT --

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Though several readers know me personally and many others at least know my name and locale, many others still do not; so am regularly amused by guesses, invariably wrong, of my identity.
Just to set the record straight (lest some other folks be besmirched by false association), let me say that I am NOT in any way related to Laura Erickson, Julie Zickefoose, Noel Snyder, or anyone else prominent in birding circles (and not related to Paris Hilton ** or Brad Pitt ** either). Nor am I a retired biology or ornithology professor, nor professionally connected to Cornell's Lab of Ornithology, or any other ornithology or conservation group for that matter (indeed, as Groucho Marx opined, I'm not too sure I'd even want to belong to any group that would have me as a member ;-)).

Cyberthrush is simply one of millions of average weekend birders around America, who happens to have a long abiding interest in math, science, birds, and... the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (pretty much in that order). I've never seen an Ivory-bill, nor expect to --- once they are documented, I'd prefer that only trained ecologists, naturalists, and forestry personnel, be permitted in the area, and most birders, like myself (and even the vast majority of ornithologists), be kept out, well OUT --- I don't expect that to happen, but one can wish. I'm not convinced that the birding community in general, with entrenched competitiveness and professional jealousies, can be of great help to this species now, except by preserving more habitat and minimizing human presence. But studies will no doubt be done (and at least some false conclusions likely be drawn and argued over).

My own Ivory-bill stance is itself a tad ironic given an undue skepticism on my part of biological matters in general (where variables are far too complex and interactive for certainty) --- I have minimal scientific faith in bird data, bird counts, bird lists, species' taxonomy, journal articles, field biology in general, or even avian molecular work. But I do have faith in repeated bird observations by reputable, credible individuals, and ultimately first-hand observation is the underlying basis of birding --- indeed, if we discount it too much there can be little good science at all left to birding.

So I'll continue to doubt whether Central American hummingbirds ever make their way to Wisconsin under their own power, or whether anyone has truly seen over 8000 species of birds in their lifetime, or whether birds really evolved from dinosaurs (there are counter theories), or whether the AOU ever employs common sense in the re-naming and re-re-naming of North American birds, or whether it was humanly possible for a lone grad student in the 1930's to have conducted a thorough research study of a rare bird species across the entire American Southeast, BUT.... I don't much doubt that several people in my lifetime have observed Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, and others will continue to do so, and moreover, that living creatures routinely surpass the limitations we humans, in our myopia, erroneously place on them. ...May it be so, and more importantly, may it, in time, be documented to everyone's satisfaction.

[ ** just dropped these in to increase 'hits' during Google searches ;-) ]
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Elsewhere on the Web:

see the International Bird Rescue Research Center blog for updates on the oil spill in San Francisco Bay and ongoing bird rescue efforts there, or to donate money to help.
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-- Go, Look --

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New York birder Rich Guthrie, who announced his Arkansas Ivory-billed Woodpecker sighting earlier this year (while volunteering for Cornell), makes a plea on BirdChat for others to go look... and take a camera:

http://listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0711d&L=birdchat&P=174
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-- Another Thing To Be Thankful For --

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Not IBWO-related, but...

One of my favorite, more quirky, bird sites John Trapp's "Birds Etcetera" blog had gone NON-updated for a long while, but just noticed it has a new post. Nothing earthshaking, but good to see John back (...even though he's wrong about some things ;-)). No explanation for the 3-month lapse between posts, but hope all is well out his way, and if you'd fallen out of the habit of stopping by John's spot in cyberspace, begin checking it out again.
Now, pass the cranberry sauce...
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-- New Conservation Book --

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With Christmas around the corner there are a lot of good bird and nature book offerings available this season. One nicely-done, new volume worth a look for your birding friends is "Birder's Conservation Handbook," by Jeffrey Wells, covering 100 endangered birds of North America (yes, the Ivory-bill is included). Scott Weidensaul calls the book a "gold mine." Amazon link here.
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-- Thanks-Giving --

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Once again time for a yearly list of some things I be feelin' grateful for:

10. Green tea
9. Hybrid cars
8. Prime numbers
7. Apple Inc.
6. Ivory-billed Researchers' Forum
5. Noel F.R. Snyder
4. Velcro
3. Ben Stiller, Steve Carell, and Stephen Colbert
2. U.S. Fish and Wildlife IBWO Draft Recovery Plan and ALL those searching
1. Childhood intuition...

And may everyone find many things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving season...
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-- USF&W Summary --

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The US Fish & Wildlife Service has released a short summary of their 2007 Ivory-billed Woodpecker search season:

http://www.fws.gov/ivorybill/IBM-SearchSummary2007.pdf

The state searches briefly summarized therein are Arkansas, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina. Possible auditory encounters and IBWO foraging or cavity sign continue to be mentioned, but of course no definitive sightings or film/video reported.

USF&W biologist Chuck Hunter, one of the leaders of the effort, concludes, “It is imperative we continue with searches for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Enough credible evidence continues to come to our attention that leads us to believe several isolated pairs or very small populations still exist.”

According to the summary, the 2008 search may make greater use of helicopters for searching from the air, while employing "smaller professional groups," but increasing citizen involvement in the effort.

Personally, I continue to doubt that IBWO will be found in Texas, though am happy for searches to continue there. The WesternTennessee-Kentucky-Illinois-Missouri corridor actually intrigues me more than Texas; possibly more even than the current sharp focus on South Carolina, which I've only slowly come to take far more seriously. And finally, the NorthFlorida-Georgia-Alabama-Mississippi-Louisiana corridor, remains, to my mind the very best chance for Ivory-bill persistence... but, nothing really more than gut hunches. And the Arkansas search of course continues as well.

Cornell should be out within a month with a more detailed account of their specific search efforts from the past year. But I suspect now that the Auburn summary of their Choctawhatchee effort may not be publicly available before the new 2008 search season is already underway.

The bottom-line message from the USF&W report is that, despite what one might think from perusing opinions in certain corners of cyberspace, many of the professionals most familiar with the data and evidence for the presence of Ivory-bills, continue to believe that the effort is worth the time, money, and manpower expended.
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-- More Snyder --

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I've been pushing Noel Snyder's most recent Ivory-bill monograph lately, but might be worth noting that Snyder also has authored several book-length volumes as well, possibly of interest to folks, including extensive writing on the California Condor (the recovery program for which he helped plan), and one of the few academic volumes devoted wholly to the Carolina Parakeet. Amazon link here.
[p.s. - I have no financial interest/connection to any of Noel's works, or anyone else's for that matter.]
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-- Birds and Photos --

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It never ceases to amaze me how much of the skepticism over Ivory-billed Woodpeckers revolves around the simple lack of a clearcut, definitive photograph. The prevalence of cameras (let alone video recorders) amongst outdoorsmen and birders is a relatively new phenomena; it's not as if people have swarmed into the woods for 60 continuous years, cameras in hand, trying to capture this bird on film, as sometimes seems implied.
In a recent estimate of bird populations in North America based on various counts/censuses and statistical extrapolations, I noticed that the estimate for Pileated Woodpeckers was 930,000. How many of those have ever been photographed I wonder? A tiny, tiny, tiny fraction I suspect. Should we presume that 900,000 of them likely don't really exist for lack of a photo verifying them? Are they just figments of groupthink and statistics perhaps? And what if there were only 100 Pileateds left --- how many photos would there then be? Possibly none? Simply put, most individual woodland birds are likely never seen by human eyes, let alone photographed. That a few scarce IBWOs may have eluded humans isn't incredible, it's the norm that most individual birds accomplish. Yes, eventually, concerted efforts to capture such on film ought be successful... but eventually can take awhile, and, as has been argued before, may be dependent on finding an active nesthole of a creature that has no interest in being found.
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Elsewhere on the Web:

further update on the Wisconsin Green-breasted Mango here.

... here a bird with chutzpa.... ;-)

...and sad, sad story here (SanFrancisco Bay oil spill).

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-- 2nd Annual IBWO Gala in February --

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The invitation/registration for Bobby Harrison's 2nd annual Ivory-billed Woodpecker Foundation Gala on Saturday, Feb, 23, 2008, in Huntsville, Alabama, is up on the Web through this link (pdf form). Schedule of events/speakers is included, with Jerry Jackson giving the keynote address. Tickets range from $35 to $250. [NOTE: I assume they'll get it corrected, but the date for the Gala is currently erroneously given as "Feb. 28" on the linked page.]
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In the meanwhile you may wish to email John Conyers of the House Judiciary Committee that you would very much like him to move forward promptly with Dennis Kucinich's resolution for the impeachment of Vice-President Dick Cheney. It's the least we can do for our exasperated allies around the globe who increasingly recognize this particular Administration as perilously incompetent and a significant threat to world stability.

john.conyers@mail.house.gov
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-- In Praise of.... --

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....the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, perhaps...

The folks over at "10,000 Birds" blog have a contest running to win free copies of the handsome, new, well-reviewed volume, "Bird: The Definitive Visual Guide" from DK Publishing (retail value - $50). Contest entry involves writing an essay (250-750 words) about a single favorite North American bird species of your choice entitled, "In Praise of _________." Entries need to be submitted to 10,000 Birds blog by Nov. 30 and will be published there in December prior to selection of winners. See further details at their site.

Have at it....
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-- More Harrison --

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New book is out from The Explorer's Club entitled "They Lived to Tell the Tale," including, among its 41 entries, a chapter by Bobby Harrison on his Ivory-bill encounters.

....on a sidenote, almost any great scientist will tell you that intuition, and not logic or reason, is really what underlies most good science --- a topic I suspect worth a post of its own at a certain point in the future....
("It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover." -- J. H. Poincare)
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Elsewhere on the Web:

The Wisconsin Green-breasted Mango (hummingbird), mentioned here previously, has been captured and taken to a wildlife rehabilitation center for now, not due to any injury or health problem, but on the supposition that it could not survive oncoming cold temps, nor have time to reach a warmer clime. I'm not sure I agree with this action, which is stirring a lot of debate, but IF it is a correct decision it is probably because my original surmise that the bird arrived in WI. via false passage in the trailer of a freight truck and not under its own direction is correct. A truly vagrant hummingbird, following its instincts, would likely have left the area ahead of a cold front in enough time to reach warmer temps; whereas a confused and possibly weakened hummer (that may have spent 24 hrs. in a tractor trailer), might not do so and in fact be in need of assistance. But either way, this is a rather unusual and controversial development.
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-- Wattensaw Redux --

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Reminder-time again: Noel Snyder's new monograph, "An Alternative Hypothesis for the Cause of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker's Decline," ($25) is available here :

http://www.wfvz.org/html/pub_prog.html
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Over the years, living in several different states, and associated with different birding groups, I've regularly run into birders (long before the current IBWO interest) who related stories about seeing possible Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in the 60's or 70's, or knowing other people they trusted who thought they may have seen one. These were all encounters that were never officially turned in to anyone, due to lack of documentation or simple fear of ridicule. It is difficult to know how many such possible claims went unreported prior to the Cornell announcement, but probably in the 100's across the entire Southeast over decades.

Anyway, in that vein, "MMinNY" over at IBWO Searchers Forum has found this simple, pertinent entry (which I'd never seen before) from a Jan. 2002 hunting forum thread (discussing the 1999 Kulivan IBWO sighting), from one "ncboman" --- interesting because it makes reference to Wattensaw (Arkansas) 30+ years before Wattensaw became a sudden center of attention with several sightings claims:

"I still think I may have seen 3 ivory bills in 1973 at a place in Arkansas called Wattensaw? I was over 100 yds. away and could not make a positive ID. Being new to the area, I wasn't sure what was there but I had already seen good numbers of Pileated woodpeckers and I know these birds were different.
Being young and stupid, I didn't go to them, preferring to stay in my stand. I wish I had checked them out more closely now. "

(the actual thread is archived here, with the above post at bottom of page)
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-- 'nother Claim Detailed --

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News story on another IBWO claimant, biologist Richard Robert Anderson (auditory and sighting encounters), here.

And British birders may want to take note that Dr. Dan Mennill, associated with the Auburn Ivory-billed Woodpecker search in the Florida panhandle, as chief sound analyst, is speaking Nov. 16 at the McIlwraith Field Naturalists of London Conservation Awards Banquet. 'NOTHER CORRECTION: myyyyyyy bad; this is in London, ONTARIO (Canada), not Britain!! (...I'll try to get more sleep in the future).
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-- Of Mangos and Dead Horses --

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For those who don't already know, Green-breasted Mangos are large flashy hummingbirds of Central America, occasionally documented in the US. One was recently confirmed in Georgia, an interesting find to be sure. Most that have ventured into the US over the years though, have been found in Texas (16 or more), not a far cry out of their range, and thusly not so difficult to account for. But in the past, one such bird was documented in western North Carolina and, 7 years later, another in Wisconsin. The probability of a Mango, by its own volition, making it as far north as WI., or even NC. (when they've not been seen anywhere north of Texas) I believe is vanishingly small, and so have always presumed these two individuals likely got trapped in the back of carrier trucks (possibly hauling tropical plants, as there are many trucks moving south to north doing such) and released when the sliding back door opened upon destination arrival. 'Little brown jobs' (sparrows and wrens) get trapped in the back of large trucks with some regularity and there's no particular reason it couldn't have happened twice (or more) to Mangos in 7 years --- in fact, I think it far more probabilistic than any other explanation. Thus, I find it interesting that David Sibley actually believes it more likely these two birds are true vagrants, which I would term "wishful thinking" ;-) pretty much unsupported by any evidence (such as intervening sightings between Texas and farther north). But of course neither of us can know for sure...

But it got me to thinking... what would it take to convince me there really were vagrant Mangos traveling so far north? --- It would take 'numbers;' i.e. not 1 or 2 isolated cases, but a half-dozen of them, in a more condensed time-frame, showing up in northerly locales --- that might begin to be persuasive that something really is going on here other than the randomness of the long haul freight industry.
AND AGAIN, (you knew I was headed somewhere with this ;-) THAT is what we have with Ivory-billed Woodpeckers --- numbers --- 1 or 3 or 5 or even a dozen sightings over the many years might easily be written off as mistakes, but not so likely for the dozens of claims piled up over that elapsed time (NOT all of which are brief, or undetailed, or from non-credible sources, or coming in the middle of IBWO frenzy, despite what some will say).

I'm beating a dead horse here with those who disagree, but I'll repeat it nonetheless: UNTIL there are adequately thorough searches of a majority of pertinent habitat areas, and while sightings continue to infrequently occur, there is NO SOLID EVIDENCE for the extinction of this species (just solid evidence of rarity). Invoking the fact that birders make mistakes as a blanket explanation for so many varied claims across time, is almost insultingly simplistic; a catchall explanation that can be used for anything. And again, if skeptics truly believe that 'brief' identifications are so regularly UNreliable, than I challenge them to come out foursquare against the inclusion of brief sightings on any-and-all official bird counts --- such reports should have no place in databases if their unreliability is as commonplace as painted (funny thing, that brief sightings are accepted so routinely on count days; brief looks of Pileateds are apparently never subject to error, and brief looks of IBWO are 100% subject to error).

If several more years of significant searching result in no documentation for Ivory-bills I'll have no problem saying it looks as though the species may be extinct afterall (though I'll still have no idea in which decade the extinction occurred). And some of us can then say with a clear conscience that we gave it our all, and erred on the side of the bird. But if in that time the species is confirmed what will skeptics have to say...? "geee, sorry, my baaaad," or will some of them be sooo busy packing their bags for a swing by the swamp to get a look just so they can check it off their (unvalidated) lifelists, to bother saying anything at all --- and I'll just bet, by that point, in their estimation, a 2-second look will have magically become plenty sufficient time for putting it on that lifelist, and recounting their wonderful story 100 times over when they return home....

P.S.... in all of this, I don't mean to sound overly harsh with David S.; he's easily one of the most civil and well-spoken folks in these whole proceedings... but this doesn't mean, as I'm sure he'd admit, that he might not be 'mistaken' about both the Green-breasted Mango and the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.
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-- A Little Bedtime Reading --

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'Fangsheath' over at IBWO Researchers Forum has added a thread to that forum compiling in one spot much of the major published material relating to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker:

http://www.ibwo.net/forum/showthread.php?p=3209#post3209

Several of the pieces are directly accessible on the Web by given links. I've added a link to this thread on the left of my blog, right above the 'IBWO Resources' link, which also comes from IBWO Researchers Forum (there is some content overlap between the two links).
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-- Old Quotes Revisited --

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Not much news, so I'll just repeat a couple of old 1930's quotes from T. Gilbert Pearson, one of the premier American naturalists/ornithologists of the 20th century :

"The supreme moment of my life as a bird student came in May, 1932, when in a great primeval forest in northern Louisiana, I saw, for the first time, a living ivory-billed woodpecker... The ivory-bill is decidedly larger than the pileated, and this difference in size is very apparent, as we had ample opportunity to observe, when by chance birds of both species fed at the same time on a tall decayed stump within 80 feet of our hiding place."

"The reduction in abundance in this species is due most probably to persecution by man, as the species has been shot relentlessly without particular cause except curiosity and a desire for the feathers or beaks."

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Elsewhere on the Web:

Most folks in the east have taken down their hummingbird feeders by now, assuming the Ruby-throats have made their way south, but as many know, more and more western hummingbirds are almost routinely showing up in the east each winter in regular, if sparse, occurrences. So put that feeder back up, keep it filled with fresh sugar water (and try to keep from freezing), and watch what shows up. Moreover, many people around are intently studying the phenomena/movement of winter hummers in the east, so If you're actually lucky enough to get one, try finding an appropriate person in your area, or on the Web, to report it to. More info here (and there is a LOT of other info on the Web):

http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/Late_hummingbirds.html

And here's a beaut of an example from current news! (a Green-breasted Mango banded in Georgia recently):

http://www.narba.org/index.cfm/MenuItemID/144.htm

(hmmmm.... hummingbirds in winter.... gotta wonder how long they'd been coming before skeptics accepted it....?)

-- Extinct in 1931 --

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fer shuuuuur....

A poster on the Arkansas listserv writes about an old book find from 1931 already referring to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker as extinct, well before the Singer Tract study:

http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/ARKS.html#1193619323

Of course this species was thought extinct in many minds by 1900, then again by 1920, then by 1930, and then again by 1950, only to be followed by more decades of reports. It's entire history is that of a species prematurely declared gone by the impatient and short-sighted, based upon little solid evidence. Evidence for 'rarity' is one thing, and not so difficult to document; evidence for 'extinction' is quite another, and exceedingly difficult to establish. One ought tread carefully.

....and one last time (well, may do another reminder in a week), Noel Snyder's monograph on Ivory-billed Woodpecker decline available here. It has a limited initial printing so may want to get any orders in early, although if enough demand, could get a second printing.
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Web Grab Bag offering: The new biography of Roger Tory Peterson by Douglas Carlson is now out. I prefer folks support their local bookstores if practical, but nonetheless here is the Amazon link.
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