==> THEblog devoted, since 2005, to news & commentary on the most iconic bird in American ornithology, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (IBWO)... and sometimes other schtuff [contact: cyberthrush@gmail.com]
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Just some passages from astronomer Chet Raymo today taken from his 2003 book, "The Path: a One-Mile Walk Through the Universe" :
"...however one chooses to romanticize what in retrospect seems a fetching life, it is impossible to reclaim it... Technology -- with its awesome potential and perils -- is here to stay. The inventory of Earth's living species currently stands somewhere near 2 million. There are almost certainly at least ten times as many species that have not yet been described and named --- the true number of species may be more than 100 million. Many of these are inevitably doomed by human population growth....
All life --- the whole glorious parade along the path --- depends upon the photosynthesizers... With the invention of photosynthesis, life plugged into a star, and the battle against entropy was won. The universe continues to run down, as it must, but on the surface of the earth there spreads out a film of highly ordered matter of marvelous complexity and resourcefulness. The one-celled organisms that ruled the Earth 3 billion years ago were no more advanced than the scum that lives on our shower curtains, but that scum had evolved the ability to make carbohydrates with sunlight... Animals developed along a different branch of the evolutionary tree, and it seems unlikely that you and I had photosynthesizers among our ancestors. But the tree of life is a web of interdependence. Green leaves are our necessary link to our yellow star.
...The Arcadian ideal of humans living in harmony with tamed nature did not begin with Frederick Law Olmsted, Capability Brown, or even the supposed Peloponnesian paradise itself (witness the more ancient myth of the Garden of Eden), nor was it discredited by the obscenities of the twentieth century's wars, the Great Depression, or the grimmer excesses of technology. It is a sturdy old myth, and in it we might still hope to combine the Enlightenment, with its confidence in the power of the human mind to make sense of the world, and romanticism, with its belief that all of life is a miracle. Along the one-mile walk of the path, I have found these ostensibly competing tendencies happily fused: order and surprise, artificial and natural, civilized and wild, human self-interest and organic wholeness. ....About half of the earth's land surface is presently exploited by humans, and all of the land and water surface is touched in some way by the waste products of human cunning... The technological products of human ingenuity represent an inevitable stage in planetary evolution, yet our Arcadian yearnings are dictated by millions of years of pretechnological human evolution. It is a conundrum of human life that our intellects have outraced our instincts; cultural evolution has overtaken organic evolution. Biologically, we are hunter-gatherers who suddenly find ourselves in command of almost unimaginable powers for planetary transformation."
....and lastly this thought from E.O. Wilson:
"If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos. "
Just an old YouTube offering to tide things over during the current IBWO news lull:
Meanwhile, independent searcher Richard Lyttle is asking for additional help from any volunteers for his efforts along the Santee area in S. Carolina. His website here: http://www.ibwsearches.com/ The official IBWO search in the Congaree is probably winding down about now for this season; don't know if any veterans of that effort care to assist Richard. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just a quick correction to post of couple days ago: a reader informs me the Cornell Mobile Team is still in Fla., currently North Florida, before their return to Ark. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Again, this gets at the problem I was trying to expose in the "Parable" post, that many such plans are potentially flawed; their short-term success questionable, and their long term success usually doomed (given a long enough term). I certainly don't oppose such efforts, but the chances of full success are more limited than often implied. Moreover, there are sometimes pork-barrel-like politics involved when individuals vigorously want certain pet projects, that are NOT guaranteed of success, funded at the expense of other projects also not guaranteed of success. The way to save species is to save habitat, and unlike many other endangered species, the IBWO search focuses attention on 100s of 1000s of acres of habitat across a wide expanse of land --- yes, it could all come to naught, but the evidence and verdict is far from in, despite what some choose to contend. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cornell's Mobile Team's latest update is now up covering their travels in the Mangrove forests, Everglades, and Fakahatchee Strand of South Florida, with no breaking IBWO news. Update only goes through March 26th, almost 4 weeks ago. I suspect by now they're well on their way back to Arkansas or even there already. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In possibly more discouraging news, just noticed this brief note from LSU's James Van Remsen on the Louisiana birding listserv today in regard to the La. IBWO search:
"LA DWF sponsored a 4-person, 30-day search of the best habitats in Pearl River WMA in Jan/Feb, and they did not detect any evidence for presence of IBWO."
Can I assume this is in fact a reference to THIS year (if so, did they have any contact with Mike Collins)??? I had not heard of the LSU folks spending any significant time in the Pearl of late (...if anything, one might expect them to be spending time in the Atchafalaya this season?). (Their 2002 effort was a similar 6-person, 30-day Jan/Feb search of the Pearl.)
In other news, in early March I briefly mentioned here the surprise finding (by remote camera) in California of a wolverine long thought to be extirpated from the area. Here an interesting follow-up report to that story demonstrating that controversy isn't unique to the Ivory-bill situation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An old parable tells of a young boy who spies an old man early one morning walking along the shoreline, picking up starfish in the sand and tossing them into the sea. The boy runs up and asks, "What are you doing old man?" To which the man explains, "These starfish were stranded in the sand overnight by the tide, and if they don't get back in the water before the sun rises they will bake and die here." The boy looks far down the shoreline and says, "but old man there are thousands of starfish along this beach, what possible difference do you think your efforts can make?" The old man picks up another, tossing it into the waves, and responds, "it made a difference to THAT one."
Our efforts in conservation are frankly miniscule, and almost meaningless, in the grand scheme of things, yet it is still imperative we make such efforts on behalf of whatever remnant of moral authority we have as humans. I'd almost rather not write this post but increasingly feel pushed to, since skeptics now give so much weight to the notion that dollars spent on the IBWO is wasted while other endangered species go begging. OPEN YOUR EYES! --- MOST current endangered species, as well as most wild vertebrate life, on this continent WILL be largely GONE within a few hundred years no matter how short-term money is spent; THAT is the unstoppable trajectory that human development is on; if someone can paint me a realistic scenario in which that is NOT the case I'd be curious to see it.
People are looking 25-50 years into the future and believing that blip of time means something. It doesn't. You can kiss the condors and whooping cranes and spotted owls and most wood warblers, etc. etc. etc. goodbye. Such is the dirty little secret of human "progress." Still, morally, those of us who care about such things have no choice but to make the effort to save them anyway, for however briefly we can. It is really no different than spending enormous sums of money on medical procedures for individuals with cancer, or heart disease, or stroke, or Alzheimers, etc. to extend their lives for 5 or 10 or even 25 years --- even though they/we are all going to die in the end. If we make such efforts for individuals we should certainly do so for whole species, even if doomed. We can save some of these species long enough that our grandchildren, maybe even our great grandchildren, can see them, but if you think your great grandchildren's great grandchildren will see them you are dreaming, with little sense of the speed of oncoming changes. Apologies for my pessimism....
Working to save the Ivory-bill, even if it turned out to be gone, just might entail preserving more land and habitat than work on behalf of almost any other species now under consideration. I'm not convinced the $27 million is a wise use of dollars... problem is, I'm not convinced it isn't, and I still find the naysayers' arguments just a tad too simplistic and pollyannish about how much good it would automatically do elsewhere. Like so much in this debate, that is one great big unsettled... MAYBE. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emailers keep asking about various things/rumors... if I knew of anything impending I couldn't report it anyway, so not a lot of point in asking! But, I don't. Ground searches will be largely wound down by end of month, though various cameras/ARUs will remain up and monitored. Still awaiting a final report from Cornell's Mobile Team as to any thoughts from time spent in Florida. Don't know for sure, but I don't expect any significant results from the Auburn group in the Panhandle, nor from the Arkansas effort, nor from Texas. Tennessee of course indicated a few glimmers lately, but likely nothing conclusive. Similarly for South Carolina, and not certain they will even publicly release their findings. Don't know about Louisiana, but doubt there will be anything significant to report out of Mississippi, Alabama, or Georgia. All just hunches, and not much point to emailing me for further info/answers that I don't have (though there are a few details I'm waiting to hear more about). Officials will report things on their own timetable as appropriate. Of course there are also some independent searchers out there who don't answer to the IBWO Working Group and can report more freely. And no, I don't know anything further about Bill Smith's supposed book either. Let's see, does that about cover it. Hope I'm wrong, and there's more to certain rumors than I've gotten wind of, but not holdin' my breath. Better to maintain low expectations and maybe be surprised, than the other way around.
Otherwise, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker just keeps getting around, showing up yesterday in the "The Huffington Post" of all places. Just a brief mention many paragraphs down in a rant from Harry Fuller, but since he seems to have gotten most of it right in his essay, perhaps he's right about our friend the IBWO. .......................................................
Not much news, so will just head into the weekend with this quote drawn from Morris Kline's classic, "Mathematics: the Loss of Certainty" (it is in reference to the 20th century crumbling of the foundations of mathematics):
"The developments in this century bearing on the foundations of mathematics are best summarized in a story. On the banks of the Rhine, a beautiful castle had been standing for centuries. In the cellar of the castle, an intricate network of webbing had been constructed by industrious spiders, who lived there. One day a strong wind sprang up and destroyed the web. Frantically, the spiders worked to repair the damage. They thought it was their webbing that was holding up the castle."
I think "the foundations of mathematics" could be substituted with "the existence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker," and the only question remaining then is whether the spiders represent skeptics or believers... As an emailer recently wrote, we're heading into the bottom of the ninth (for this season), and I wish I had more to say but that's all for now. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Only recently acquired Professor Michael Steinberg's new volume, "Stalking the Ghost Bird," about the search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Louisiana (buy here or here). Not finished with it, but will say a few things, since some emailers have asked about it:
The book is highly anecdotal, which both makes it interesting, but also easily dismissable by critics. But within those anecdotes it gives a little more of the flavor of the many Ivory-bill sightings which have occurred throughout the southeast over the years (even though it largely focuses on La.), but aren't always widely publicized. Indeed, several names, both professionals and average Joes, that are prominent in this book, aren't seen much or at all in some other Ivory-bill volumes (BTW, Mike Collins' work at the Pearl is not included in the book, for anyone wondering -- much of the book was probably written prior to Mike's efforts). The author and most of those he interviews clearly believe in the species' likely persistence. A nice, brief summary of major sighting claims across the south over the decades is given at book's end.
At a pricey $25 (or $17 Amazon) for a ~150 page book that focuses primarily on a single state it's hard for me to wholeheartedly recommend it to all (academic press publications tend to be pricey, and not sure why this couldn't have come out directly in paperback, and cheaper), but it does fill a different niche from other IBWO books and is an enjoyable read and relatively current... so hardcore 'true believers' may well want it (IBWO skeptics will view it as more-of-the-same)... or, if the species is finally confirmed in Louisiana ahead of all other states, then... yeah, it may get snapped off the shelves. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nice essay on extinction by Jonathan Rosen here (though no mention made of the Ivory-bill). And other vitally important news of the woodpecker-variety here. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Cornell's Arkansas Team never mentioned the results of their Big Woods' helicopter search in their Feb. updates, one could surmise it meant there wasn't much news to report. So not surprising that in a new Cornell summary of that endeavor, it is concluded that Ivory-bills and many other birds simply do not adequately flush for view at the sound of such overhead flights. Their summary here.
The principal piece of evidence they have is the small number (percentage-wise) of Pileateds which flushed out into the open (they have a sense of the overall numbers of Pileateds present from their extensive groundwork, and of course any IBWOs would be hugely fewer). This reminds me that I've long wondered how many Pileateds are being captured on film by remote cameras in the Big Woods. Critics find it hard-to-imagine that, if they exist, Ivory-bills haven't yet been captured by remote cameras. Knowing the number and frequency of capturing PIWOs on film might give a slightly better indication of the likelihood that an IBWO ought to have been filmed by now. Anyone out there have such stats (both total no. of PIWOs captured, and as a percentage of all 'critters' captured on film --- one practical problem is that many shots of PIWO will be the same bird returning again and again to the same cavity or foraging site)???
............................................................... And another aside:
Two men are staring at a lone sentence on a blackboard. It reads simply:
"Only an idiot would believe this sentence."
The first man asks the second, "Do you believe that sentence?"
The second man replies, "OF COURSE NOT! Only an idiot would believe that sentence."
Think about it.... (I've adapted this from one of my favorite, more unusual, internet sites:http://www.futilitycloset.com/ ) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New update from Cornell's Arkansas team with more actual details than they usually afford us, here; continued followup in western Tennessee is briefly mentioned, but most of post about investigating a previously-unsearched area of southwest Arkansas. Interesting story of an encounter with a Pileated missing all its secondaries as well. Buuut... need I say it, no headline IBWO news. Can an update from the Mobile Team now be far behind...?
Re: those inquiring emails I'm getting... no, NO, the recent blog alterations mean NOTHING... I had several changes in mind to make this summer, and seeing David Luneau's revamped website just inspired me to do a few cosmetic changes of my own right now. And there's nothing to read between the lines either. Yes, there are multiple rumors afloat... and there are ALWAYS rumors in April... nothing substantive that I'm aware of, and I've serious doubts (in terms of anything definitive) that any of it means much. But, as skeptics would say, I could be mistaken, and others may have a different take altogether. Carry on..... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [ -- Making a few cosmetic changes just to battle the current tedium... ]
Ventures Birding Tours has an upcoming May 8 (Thur.) outing to the Congaree in S.Carolina scheduled ($35/day). Will probably cover some of the more well-traveled areas of the park (not the more remote and vast areas of IBWO interest, but still might be of interest to some of you.
From the late Arthur C. Clarke this:
"It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the preconceived idea that what they are investigating is impossible. When this happens, the most well-informed men become blinded by their prejudices and are unable to see what lies directly ahead of them."
David Sibley has had some good discussion recently at his blog regarding a Texas border fence/wall proposed by the Feds for national security concerns, but with potentially devastating consequences for area birds. Worth checking out:
David Luneau has re-done his Ivory-bill website here. Looks nice; same info available as before, but may have to hunt around a little bit for it if you'd gotten used to his old webpage.
See if we can nudge 'em... ;-)) --- been over a month since Cornell's Mobile Team did their last update, at that point from S. Florida....
The First Santee Birding and Nature Festival (S.Carolina) takes place next weekend (Apr. 18-20):
If you haven't checked in with the 3 California owl babies lately they're growing fast (and moving around a lot, so they're not always in camera view), and ugly as sin... NO, NO, just kidding! :
Three spiders named Mr. Ten, Mr. Nine, and Mr. Eight are crawling along an Amazonian jungle floor. One spider has 10 legs; one has 9 legs; and one has 8 legs. All of them are usually quite happy and enjoy the diversity of animals with whom they share the jungle. Today, however, the hot weather is giving them bad tempers. “I think it is interesting,” says Mr. Ten, “that none of us have the same number of legs that our names would suggest.” “Who the heck cares?” replies the spider with 9 legs. How many legs does Mr. Nine have? (There is only one correct answer, and it is easily determinable from the information given, but interestingly several folks have difficulty with it). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An emailer directs me to a listing of an IBWO study (of sorts) in the Congaree region apparently submitted by Ivory-bill researcher Fred Virrazzi about a month ago. It lists a contact for further info, though I'm not sure how much info they're actually giving out, nor do I personally know the specifics of the study beyond what's indicated in the title, "Assessment of Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) and Picidae Responsiveness to Anthropomorphic Double Knocks in the Summer Season." [ You have to select the year "2007," "Congaree NP," and the subject "birds/ornithology" to get to the citation. ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If this picture is any indication of mutations-to-be, I s'pose any photograph of a purported Ivory-billed Woodpecker is also now useless as evidence; we will need DNA!
....and some more remarkable pics here (nothing to do with IBWOs):
Here, report (pdf) from US Fish & Wildlife, summarizing results of the 2006-7 IBWO search season. Also includes some planning, funding, and conservation details, but nothing new in the way of evidence for the presence of Ivory-bills that wasn't already in the public domain in some form (several dozen possible auditory encounters and at most 20 potential visual encounters from across the entire southeast are cited for the season --- slightly more state-by-state detail was given in this earlier report ). And with another season now close to ending, time nears to commence another such report. ......................................................
Elsewhere in the world of birds:
For your laugh of the daythis story(which includes this line, just to pull you in: "Nervous postal workers in the area have been armed with water pistols".
(of course skeptics already got their laughs and cries from the above US F&W summary... just thought I'd throw that in before someone sends it as a comment). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
