-- Choctawhatchee Update --

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Auburn's update for their past season searching the Choctawhatchee area (Fla.) has been posted here. Similar to past summaries... more signs/sounds/sightings but no definitive evidence. Future searching will rely heavily on improved remote cameras as outlined in these passages from the report:

"So where does all this leave us? Pretty much in the same position as in June 2006. We have a large body of evidence that Ivory-billed Woodpeckers persist along the Choctawhatchee River in the Florida panhandle, but we do not have definitive proof that they exist...
The good news is that after years of having remote cameras that were largely inadequate to get definitive documentation of ivorybills, we finally have a remote camera system that I think will work. A major problem with the remote cameras that we’ve used to date is that the motion sensors haven’t functioned properly. Either they are triggered by shadows and wind movement or they only trigger for a large mammal. That left us with time lapse photography—taking an image every few seconds and then pouring over millions of random images looking for our bird. We needed a better way to trigger a camera when a woodpecker moved in front of it. We finally have such a trigger.
Engineers at National Geographic designed for us a seismic sensor—a camera trigger that is tripped by vibrations. In other words, we now have a camera that will only be triggered by something banging on the trunk of a tree. With this new sensor, we should have almost no false activations. Every picture should be a woodpecker banging on the tree. Along with this, the Reconyx camera company just came out with a new line of game cams that are much better than the old cameras we were using. These new Reconyx cameras are smaller, more compact, and most importantly shoot 3.1 megapixel color images—a huge improvement on the .5 megapixel black and white images from the old Reconyx. With these new Reconyx cameras the three mystery birds that we photographed flying through the woods in November 2006 would certainly be identifiable. The National Geographic team has replaced the motion sensors in some new Reconyx cameras with their seismic sensors. These customized units are just being completed as I send this update. In the next couple of weeks, Brian and I will go to the ivorybill site and set six of these cameras on trees with scaled bark or on dead trees showing signs of regular activity by large woodpeckers (ivorybills were recorded to feed on large decaying trees as well as fresh dead trees). These cameras can monitor a feeding tree for a couple of months with no maintenance needed. With this new setup, our approach will be like fishing for a scarce and finicky trophy fish. We cast out and wait...
...Guessing where they will land in this huge swamp forest will be difficult, but we know where at least a few birds focus there activity for at least a few months each year and we think we know what their feeding sign looks like. I think that there is a realistic chance that we will get a clear photograph of an ivorybill using these new cameras."

Of course I hope Dr. Hill's confidence in the new technology proves warranted, but personally still have reservations about the efficacy of remote cameras, over live observers on the ground --- at this point though efficiency and cost are driving factors, and human efforts will no doubt be scaled back significantly next season in most search areas. (I AM impressed with the ACONE system deployed in Arkansas, if one can just find a logical open flyway to monitor continuously for the birds --- but this system as well has had major glitches and downtime.)

And so it goes... still many areas yet to hear from.
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-- More Goodly Summer Readin' --

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This weekend someone directed me to a hysterical little volume by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein:

"Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar..."
(Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes)

If this book doesn't make you chuckle, or actually laugh-out-loud, you require a major comedy tune-up.
The book deals with various philosophical logical fallacies and paradoxes, but by using great jokes (mostly ones I'd not heard before) as illustrations --- clever (and instructive) concept.
This volume especially made a nice follow-up to Nassim Taleb's much 'heftier' book, "The Black Swan" which I'd recently finished. Even though Taleb's work is a NY Times bestseller, and entertaining in many passages, it is also a bit of a slog, as his ideas, thought-provoking as they are, are more difficult to follow. I'd recommend it to folks here (or more especially to IBWO skeptics), except that I suspect most would find it boring, and not perceive its relevance to the IBWO debate. Taleb's background is in finance, and he draws most of his examples from political, social, and economic realms, though I believe his views on NON-Gaussian and Bayesian approaches to analysis (and specifically, the relevance and even 'frequency' of 'improbable' events) have a lot of application to the life sciences as well. (Taleb's earlier work, "Fooled By Randomness," is also good.) It might almost be a better idea to read these books in the reverse order from what I did.

And happily, all these authors are working on new volumes due for release next year.
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-- Weekend Non-update --

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Jane Goodall on primates:

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/11

and E.O. Wilson on saving life on Earth:

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/83

Meanwhile, an emailer asks about a prediction for the Republican VP selection so another short, simple list here (starting from most to less likely):

Lindsey Graham
Charlie Crist
Joe Lieberman

And I'll pare down my Obama list to just 3 as well, in same (most to less likely) order:

Colin Powell
Jim Webb
Bill Bradley

(This all assumes there are elections in the U.S. this year, and that McCain and Obama are among the contenders.)

....Will also predict heat and high humidity (somewhere) for the weekend.

As to IBWO news? ...no predictions for now, but expecting a long, dull summer.
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-- Things Be Slow --

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Until summary info is released from the prior search season hard to tell how much weight will be placed on various sightings and signs that were logged, and thus where greatest emphasis will be placed for next season. One might expect Cornell to have some sort of preliminary report out by end of next week, just going by last year's timetable. Regardless, appears independent searches will continue in at least La., S.C., and Fla., and likely 2-3 other states... and any evidence short of photographic in nature will continue to be summarily dismissed by those who have already closed their minds on the subject, opting for any conjectured alternative speculation over any possibility of Ivory-bill persistence.
hmmmm.... the audacity of hope ;-)

Meanwhile 'chatter' continues in some quarters (and silence in other quarters), and oddly, I've had more sightings claims emailed to me in the last month than in the previous 12 months (mostly older sightings, from folks apparently only recently aware of this blog).
............................................................

Elsewhere:

Nestcam for German storks continues here:

http://www.stadtpark-mannheim.de/webcam/cam33.htm

Lots of guessing going on regarding Barack Obama's selection of a running mate... my list of likely choices is short and simple. For reasons I won't go into (and with the precaution that I've never correctly guessed a nominee's VP choice in the past), I'll go out on a limb and venture the choice comes down to one of the following four people: Colin Powell, Bill Bradley, Bill Richardson, Jim Webb. (A lot of other names being bandied about are certainly candidates for Cabinet or other Administration positions, but NOT V.P.)

Meanwhile George W. is off on a taxpayer-funded European vacation. When/if he returns he may wish to catch up on some reading beginning with Vincent Bugliosi's latest book.

And lastly, from the 'Believe it or not!' Dept. this:

http://iwishicouldfly.com/iwishicouldfly/journal/html/053007.htm

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-- Ponderings --

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Been waiting to hear back from a couple of folks about some things, or alternatively, to see a summary report released (but so far just silence on those fronts). So, in the meantime... :

A couple of examples drawn from Nassim Taleb's book "The Black Swan":

In a certain city there are two hospitals, one very large and one very small. One week, 60% of the babies born in one of the hospitals are male. Which of the two hospitals is it most likely to be?

People's gut reaction is often to answer 'the large hospital' or to simply say it's unanswerable, but in actuality (statistically speaking) it is more likely to be the small hospital: the large hospital, assuming more births (larger sample size), is more likely to approach the mean of ~50% for male births; the smaller hospital is more likely, in any single week, to show significant variance from the mean.

And this:

Given these two sentences:

1. Joe seemed happily married. He killed his wife.

2. Joe seemed happily married. He killed his wife to get her inheritance.

Which of the above lines seems more likely? People often instinctively answer line 2, but in fact of course line 1 is the broader (less specific) of the two, and inclusive of far more possibilities than line 2.
Put another way, in all instances where #2 is true then #1 is automatically true, but #1 could be true in many instances where #2 is NOT true.

Some say that 'timing is everything;' some say 'attitude is everything'... often though, inference is everything.

Previously, at this blog I've asked, 'if an Ivory-billed Woodpecker swoops through the forest and no one gets a photograph of it than does the bird exist?' (...and I've offered that for skeptics the answer is apparently, but erroneously, "no").

All of which, leads, finally and necessarily, to a crucial and weighty unresolved question nonchalantly posed by Julie Zickefoose over at her blog awhile back:

If a man says something in the forest and there is no female around to hear it, then is he still wrong???? ;-)))

so much for today's deep thoughts...
................................................................

Elsewhere:

"Trust" in birding here:

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/209/story/173336.html

'Clothes' make the bird here.

Dr. Irene Pepperberg's book "Alex and Me," on her life with Alex the African Grey Parrot, will be out next October, and can be pre-ordered here (proceeds going to aid "The Alex Foundation" :

http://www.alexfoundation.org/Alex_and_me.html

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-- On Not Getting a Picture --

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Since she dedicates it to "all the Ivory-billed Woodpecker seekers out there" I ought pass along this recent post from Julie Zickefoose over at her blog:

http://www.juliezickefoose.com/blog/2008/05/i-didnt-get-picture.html

Maybe more news will come before the weekend's over; or, maybe not!
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-- June Approaches --

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"Newcomb's Paradox" is a famous, interesting, and long-unresolved thought puzzle. In fact, it's often said that any roomful of people, hearing this paradox, will split down the middle between those fiercely defending one possible solution and those just as assuredly supporting the alternative possible solution --- and no amount of arguing or persuasion will change many minds. If you're not already familiar with it, here is one intro to the paradox (but there's a lot of other available literature on it) :

http://members.aol.com/kiekeben/newcomb.html

Why do I even bother bringing it up... a space-filler ;-) and, because, yes, I think it has something to say about the nature of the Ivory-bill debate (where the species' existence at the present moment is either 100% true or 0% true and not some number in-between). In fact, it might be interesting to know if there is any correlation between where IBWO atheists, agnostics, and believers come down in their response to the paradox, or simply no pattern at all.


In other news, members of the Bush Administration (who appear not to walk upon the Earth, so much as slither), express surprise, shock, and anger, once again, at truth managing to get out, despite unremitting countermeasures taken to prevent it....
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-- Butler Film --

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Another film review of George Butler's "The Lord God Bird" here.

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"The fact that human intuition is ill suited to situations involving uncertainty was known as early as the 1930s, when researchers noted that people could neither make up a sequence of numbers that passed mathematical tests for randomness nor recognize reliably whether a given string was randomly generated. In the past few decades a new academic field has emerged to study how people make judgments and decisions when faced with imperfect or incomplete information. Their research has shown that when chance is involved, people's thought processes are often seriously flawed....
Random processes are fundamental in nature and are ubiquitous in our everyday lives, yet most people do not understand them or think much about them."

-- Leonard Mlodinow, from "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" 2008

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-- Biding Time --

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While biding time, some past articles on the Madagascar Pochard, the Caatinga Woodpecker of Brazil, and Imperial Woodpecker of Mexico.

........................................................

"We all start from 'naive realism,' i.e., the doctrine that things are what they seem. We think that grass is green, that stones are hard, and that snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow are not the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow that we know in our own experience, but something very different." -- Bertrand Russell

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-- A Lil' More History --

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"Despite pronouncements [~1900] that the Ivory-bill was going extinct --- then despite pronouncements that it was extinct --- the species held on, unbeknownst to America's amateur and professional ornithologists. Its life largely had been a secret to naturalists and its apparent death a premature conclusion.
None of this became clear until well after the turn of the century, when the Ivory-bill, so everyone thought, existed only in the cabinets of natural history and on the pages of Wilson and Audubon.
In 1924, for a moment, everything changed. In spring of that year, Cornell University's Arthur Augustus Allen --- a distinguished ornithologist and popularizer of bird-watching --- was traveling with his wife, Elsa, in Florida. A guide named Morgan Tindle transformed their lives and the course of American conservation when he pointed out one particular nest to the Allens. A nest of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. The astonishment of the rediscovery --- almost like a resurrection --- soon turned to bitter disappointment after the Allens briefly left the nest. Two taxidermists, apparently with permission from the state of Florida, shot the nesting Ivory-bills. In his articles on the Ivory-bill in "The Auk" and in "National Geographic," Allen does not discuss his personal reactions to this tragedy. Though slow to anger and almost always optimistic, Allen still must have felt the loss sharply. Even with Elsa to comfort him, he wondered if they had seen the last two Ivory-bills in the world, now irrevocably gone.
The Ivory-bill suddenly had returned, then departed almost as quickly. The sighting, however, raised the possibility that other Ivory-bills might yet be found in some remote part of the deep South, in some swamp that had escaped the sharp blades of progress. Would there be --- could there be --- another resurrection of the Lord God Bird?"

--- from Christopher Cokinos' "Hope Is the Thing With Feathers," 2000

[ ...and 8 years later, in Louisiana, there was another resurrection, at the Singer Tract along the Tensas River. ]
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Some recent books of interest:

Leonard Mlodinow -- "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" here and here.

Julian Havil -- "Impossible?: Surprising Solutions to Counterintuitive Conundrums" here and here.

Stuart Kauffman -- "Reinventing the Sacred" here.
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-- Approaching Summer --

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Couple of e-mailers inform me that official searches continue in certain areas at least into next month, and one of them suggests, since I've lately been posting some historical info, mentioning the tree species IBWOs were most often observed nesting in.
So, again with the precaution that Tanner's data is based on a very limited sample size, most Ivory-bills historically in Florida were found to nest in cypress trees (both live and dead, and most often bald cypress). Outside Florida, with the exception of a few reports of birds nesting in pines, Ivory-bills were observed nesting in a variety of hardwoods: sweet gum, elm, red maple, oaks. Nests tended to be 40-70 ft. off the ground.

Again, it is somewhat ironic that most IBWO searches take place in the winter and during the breeding season when the birds were known to be the most quiet and hardest to find, sometimes traveling great distances, and then end by summer when forest visibility is much reduced (and human safety/comfort more compromised as well), but the birds move in family groups that might be more apparent.
.............................................

Elsewhere:

Compelling author Richard Preston ("The Hot Zone," "The Wild Trees," et.al.), has a new volume of essays on diverse scientific topics out entitled "Panic In Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses and other Journeys to the Edge of Science." Ahhhh yes, the edge of science, great place to hang out ;-)
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-- Fledging Time --

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Taking a cue from "Fangsheath," who recently posted some historical dates for Ivory-bill nest-incubation, over at Ivory-bill Researchers Forum, I thought it might be interesting, given the current time of year, to note the dates for actual IBWO fledglings to be seen. Between 1931 and 1939 Tanner reported (based largely on J.J. Kuhn's observations) a total of 2 young being seen (outside the nest) in the month of March, 1 in April, 4 in May, 2 in June, and 8 in July. Young Ivory-bills were known to hang out with their parents for many months after fledging. The previous numbers represent a small sample size of dubious meaning, but nonetheless might indicate that groups of Ivory-bills (as family units) may just now be emerging and foraging through the swamps just as searches have wound down (at least some automatic cameras remain up, though I'm not certain how many at this point).
......................................................................

Elsewhere:

Pretty amazing nestcam video here of two Bald Eagle chicks taken from nest and tossed aside by a "rogue" juvenile eagle (semi-happy ending with injured chicks retrieved by humans and taken to a rehab center) --- causes one to wonder how often this occurs in the wild; not a behavior I've previously heard of humans witnessing, despite a lot of eagle nests kept under observation.

Science/nature-writer Chet Raymo has a new book coming out in the fall, check here and here.

And for your further reading entertainment a slew of 'Murphy's Laws' catalogued here (be sure to check out all the left-hand categories):

http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-technology.html

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-- Tanner Redux --

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While awaiting summary info from this season's searches, may be worth reviewing some old quotes from James Tanner's 1942 monograph on the species (all italics added):

"The chief difficulty of the study has been that of drawing conclusions from relatively few observations, necessary because of the extreme scarcity of the bird. My own observations of the birds have been entirely confined to a few individuals in one part of Louisiana... the conclusions drawn from them will not necessarily apply to the species as it once was nor to individuals living in other areas. The difficulty of finding the birds, even when their whereabouts was known, also limited the number of observations. Especially was this true in the non-breeding season. With these considerations in mind, one must draw conclusions carefully and with reservations."

"The dominance of cypress in the bird's [Florida] habitat is a condition not found outside of the Florida region. Another difference is that Ivory-bills in Florida frequently fed in the pine woods bordering the swamps, something that has never been recorded in the region of the Mississippi Delta and only rarely elsewhere."

"There is no one type of forest that is the habitat of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker; it varies greatly in different sections of the bird's range."

"Hunting for localities where Ivory-bills were, and in those localities trying to find the birds, was like searching for an animated needle in a haystack."

"Winter and early spring are the only good seasons for investigating Ivory-bill habitats. Leaves are then off the trees, allowing good visibility and hearing, the birds are quite active and noisy, and the cooler weather makes work in the woods pleasant. Work in the summer is practically a waste of time because of the dense vegetation, silent birds, and depressing heat."

"Ivory-bill sign shows as bare places on recently dead limbs and trees, where the bark has been scaled off clean for a considerable extent. Pileateds do some scaling too, but it is usually confined to smaller limbs and to those longer dead. Freshness of sign can be judged by any appearance of weathering, which will soon turn bare wood a grayish color. Extensive scaling of the bark from a tree which has died so recently that the bark is still tight, with a brownish or reddish color to the exposed wood showing that the work is fresh, is one good indication of the presence of Ivory-bills."

"All the Ivory-bills that I have ever seen I located first by hearing them call and then going to them."

"Considering the maximum abundance of the Ivory-bill to have been one pair per six square miles, of the Pileated to be six pairs per one square mile, and of the Red-bellied to be twenty-one pairs per one square mile, the relative abundance of these birds would be one Ivory-bill to thirty-six Pileated to 126 Red-bellied Woodpeckers."

"Considering all the evidence, I believe that Ivory-bills were not sedentary birds, but sometimes wandered considerable distances....
Furthermore, the Ivory-bill is well adapted to traveling for long distances. It is a strong flier with a fast flight for a woodpecker, and individuals have been observed feeding over several square miles."

"The Ivory-bill's habit of feeding and living almost its whole life in and near the tops of trees makes it very unlikely that any mammal could prey on one."

"The flight of the Ivory-bill... is strong and usually direct, with steady wing-beats. They can take flight quickly either from a perch or from a hole, springing into the air with very little descent before getting up to speed. They often fly above the tree tops, dodging the trees with very little deviation from their course. In the thick woods it is ordinarily difficult to tell how far the Ivory-bills fly, but I am quite sure that their flight is often extended for half a mile or more... They end their flights with a quick upward swoop and a few braking wing-beats, usually landing on a vertical tree trunk or slightly inclined limb."

"The wing-feathers of Ivory-bills are stiff and hard, thus making their flight noisy. In the initial flight, when the wings are beaten particularly hard, they make quite a loud, wooden, fluttering sound, so much so that I often nicknamed the birds 'wooden-wings'; it is the loudest wing-sound I have ever heard from any bird of that size excepting the grouse. At times when the birds happened to swoop past me, I heard a pronounced swishing whistle."

"The notes of the nuthatches are the only bird calls I know that sound like the voice of an Ivory-bill; the Ivory-bill's calls are much longer and pitched higher than the calls of a White-breasted Nuthatch, are more in the range of a Red-breasted Nuthatch."

"Ivory-bills are not social or gregarious birds; they have apparently always lived in solitary pairs, and as long as the birds can mate, they are capable of reproduction and increase. With small numbers, inbreeding could occur, but there is no evidence that this would be harmful. Large numbers are not necessary for the continued existence of the Ivory-bill. Even though it would be better and more promising if the birds were more abundant, still they are not, and if we are to make any attempt to save the species, we must be satisfied in starting with a few individuals."

--- May it be so. . . .
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-- Cornell Summary Upcoming --

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At their website, Cornell is promising to "soon" post a summary of the past search season (...of course in the Ivory-bill arena the word "soon" often seems to be used in a way sharply different from common parlance ;-). I assume this will be a preliminary summary, primarily involving info from the Arkansas teams regarding that state and various stops in Tenn., MS., Fla. Any info from other searches in S.C., Texas, Choctawhatchee, LA., GA., IL., likely not included, but that's just a guess.

BTW, George Butler's independent film, "The Lord God Bird" is showing (appropriately enough) at the Little Rock, Ark. Film Festival which begins today for 4 days. (Simultaneously, it's also playing at the Tallahassee (Fla.) Film Festival).

Elsewhere:

Another SAAAAAD bird story here regarding white-faced ibis in Calif. DON'T read if you're prone to depression!!
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-- Tall Tale --

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Well, there's not much else IBWO-wise to link to at the moment, so for your reading entertainment this tale of an IBWO encounter farther (than usual) up the Pearl River in mid-Mississippi a decade-or-so-ago:

http://www.clarionledger.com/misc/blogs/Outdoors/pjohnson/2008/05/peckerwood-big-foot.html

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Elsewhere on the Web:

Martin Gardner, one of the best science-oriented essayists around, has a new volume, "The Jinn from Hyperspace: And Other Scribblings--Both Serious and Whimsical," another collection of various of his writings from other publications.

And in case you missed The World Series of Birding... well... ComedyCentral DIDN'T:
(hat tip to DC Birding blog for this old clip)

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=106128&title=the-world-series-of-birding

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-- Just A Note --

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Bad luck continues....

Dr. Hill's talk in Macon, GA. tonight has been cancelled due to severe storm damage in that area. It will be rescheduled for the fall.

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-- Memphis Article --

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A Memphis article recounts the Ivory-bill debate here.

With this search season winding to a close, Dr. Jerry Jackson, who possibly more than anyone is responsible for keeping hope alive for Ivory-bills into the 1990's (though a critic of recent claims), is increasingly pessimistic, saying, "I think it would be something short of a miracle if it is there," and adding, "I think that any betting person would have to say that it's probably extinct."
Allan Mueller of The Nature Conservancy and others involved with the search counter with their belief that recent claims are real and only the elusive photograph or video is yet to be achieved.

Addendum:

p.s. -- I recommended another nestcam site of storks in Germany to readers a few days back, and apparently most folks using Internet Explorer cannot pull the site up (without getting an additional plug-in or some-such) --- puhhleeeze, do yourself a favor and download the Firefox browser here, and give Internet Explorer a quiet funeral.
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-- Around the Web --

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Some more nice bird photography here :

http://www.richardettlinger.com/

Not that we didn't already know it, but UN affirms that migratory bird populations are plunging here :

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=26605&Cr=biodiversity&Cr1=

And more bad news here (Whooping Cranes abandoning nests) :

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=749206

We'll end on a positive note with this wonderful story of an American Avocet rescue here (worth a read if you're a bird-... or... a dog-lover).
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