-- Joyously Alive???? --

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http://www.fishcrow.com/winter10.html

I'll try to leave the direct link to Mike's journal page near the blog top (for easy access) while this whole episode or process plays itself out (and I have no idea how long that will take, nor am I convinced that a consensus resolution on Mike's videos will be attained... but we can keep our fingers crossed).

To head into the weekend, just some words from Julie Zickefoose written 10 years ago at the end of a 'Bird Watcher's Digest' piece on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (long before the whole Arkansas story even broke):

"We've sent it [IBWO] countless messages with our saws and our columns of smoke. Leave or die out. Find somewhere else to live. This land is our land, now. And it just doesn't listen to us; it goes on, somewhere, I have to believe it; not dead, but missing in action; alive, defiantly, desperately, joyously, alive. No one can tell me I'm wrong, and, it seems, no one can tell me I'm right. There are those of us who cannot let it go."

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-- The Story That Won't Die --

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Tennessee conclusions: More final wrap-up thoughts from Bill Pulliam on the Tennessee experience, in what appears to be his next-to-last post in the series:

http://bbill.blogspot.com/2009/11/global-big-picture.html

Maybe something else will come along to pique readers' interest in the meantime... :-)

....Hits at the blog spiked considerably the last 24 hours --- even at this late date, despite all the naysayers and folks who've abandoned this saga, any glimmer of a new prospective video of the Ghost Bird ripples excitation through the ranks --- it says something wonderful about hope and the impact of this marvelous bird on the human psyche! But we've been down this road before (many many times), and may be best to restrain expectations until some dust settles.
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-- Intermission --

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Fantastic footage of a Peruvian crested woodpecker attacked by a large green tree snake at a nestsite(?) --- don't know which is more amazing, the snake's speed or the woodpecker's persistence (snake attack begins around the 37-second mark, so you can be ready):



(hat tip to BirdChick for this one)
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-- The Pearl, Once Again --

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For anyone not reading the comments sections here, and thus unaware, Mike C. has posted recent video from the Pearl (La.) which he believes to be of Ivory-bills. Go to this link and scroll down to 11/3 - 11/4 posts:

http://www.fishcrow.com/winter10.html

Certain frames/aspects of the clips are interesting (indeed, the more I watch the more intrigued I am, while also having doubts). We may be headed once again straight into Luneau-video unresolvable la-la land, but will be curious to see what various others have to say, and interested to see what Mike uncovers on follow-up visits to same area (...or has this nomadic bird already moved 5 miles up the road ;-)
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-- Moss Island Musings --

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More Tennessee summary thoughts from Bill P. HERE.

The similarity between the Moss Island experience and that of observers elsewhere is striking. As Bill himself concludes, this "bird moves a LOT." No matter what 'hot zones' searchers establish, when they scour the area with increased people or increased searches, instead of confirming or pinpointing the bird, it seems to just move on. Very odd. Certainly during the nesting season, but even otherwise, one would expect it to have a restricted home base that it would return to every evening if not throughout the day, even while foraging might indeed take it very far afield (if it is feeding young though it must return again and again).
Or must the bird constantly move from place to place for new food resources in diminished and fragmented forest? This persistent lack of repeatability and final confirmation (very unlike other endangered species that are re-discovered) is what understandably drives skeptics nuts. No matter how many or how good the birders, or how often in the field, 'hot zones' just seem to evaporate or move on down the road. Bill attempts to surmise some parameters of the potential bird's behavior, and surmise is all we can do for now.

Again, the only solution seems to be to find an active nest site. And we've already tried human perseverance, skills, technology, and greed ($50,000 rewards ;-)) to do just that. What we seem to need is a copious dose of pure dang luck. It was certainly only luck that put Gene Sparling in a certain place at a certain moment in time to begin this whole affair, and maybe only luck can bring it to the conclusion we wish for... if such a conclusion exists.
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-- Through The Looking Glass --

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Just a long mish-mash of random things a'buggin' me:

1) People keep talking about how poor/inadequate automatic cameras have been in this search... funny thing though, those dicey, poor, crummy, worthless devices DID get decent pics of Pileateds, flickers, songbirds, squirrels along the way... just NO Ivory-bills. I agree the chance of any one camera capturing the bird we want is slim-to-none, but there have been 100's of deployments and millions of pictures by now (which increases that probability signifcantly), and, still, no IBWO... THAT is concerning. Moreover, in truth, I fully expected the advanced ACONE system used in Arkansas, even with all its downtime, to get the bird on film (again, it captured plenty of other identifiable species), but nada.
Still, the lack of a decent photo after 2 years of searches was no big deal; after 3 years disappointing, but still plausible; but after 4 years (and really 5, counting Cornell's initial year-in-secret) it becomes increasingly problematic. Recall too that when Cornell discovered a leucistic Pileated Woodpecker cavorting around the Big Woods, pictures followed in short-order. Things just don't add up well. Even if we have to find a nesthole to get pics... well, 5 years seems like perhaps enough time to have done that... just once, that's all we need. The planning of search procedures, despite flaws, often seem on paper, to make good sense, so what's gone wrong in the execution I'm not sure.

2) Even without technical analysis the bird in the Luneau video always looked to me like an IBWO; or to be more accurate, maybe I should say it looks NON-PIWO-like. BUT, I have to respect the field identification skills of Jerry Jackson and David Sibley --- that both of these individuals can look at that film clip and UNHESITATINGLY perceive a PIWO gives one pause. Their "analysis" of the video means little to me; but their immediate, subjective impression ("gizz" as it were) of this bird as a normal Pileated actually DOES carry weight for me. And that's what they perceived from the get-go, not after extensive consideration or technological manipulations. I've written before that I take the "gizz" of bird identification, from experienced birders, at least as seriously as I take any after-the-fact delineation of field marks from memory. (But again, I don't ultimately regard the Luneau clip as a resolvable, or even important, piece of evidence in this saga; it simply turned into a terrible side distraction.)

3) Most, including Cornell, focus on habitat in trying to decide where to expend energy looking for IBWOs... and so they've focused strongly on South Carolina's Congaree, where possibly the best habitat remains (and credible claims have also been made). I'm slightly less interested in habitat though, and more interested in probabilities... specifically, the probability that a species could hang out in a given area for 60+ years and evade detection. I think it unlikely (though by no means impossible) that IBWOs remain in South Carolina, where they've been looked for extensively over six decades, but much more plausible that they could move back-and-forth along forest and river corridors of the Gulf Coast (La./Miss. to Fla) over that same amount of time and evade human encounter. And as I previously wrote, the possibility of a more northerly population (again with wooded and riverine corridors) between Ark.--Mo.--Illinois--Tenn. (where they were never extensively looked for), also intrigues. Someone still has to convince me that the glimpses and sounds from S.C. are so much better than those from elsewhere as to merit the time and money expended there --- if Ivory-bills are still with us it is almost certainly because their progeny adapted, and DO NOT require the quality of habitat offered in the Congaree.

4) Martjan Lammertink is highly regarded as one of the world's premier experts on woodpeckers, especially large, endangered ones. In 1995 though I was surprised (indeed, incredulous) when he published a paper entitled "No More Hope for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker." It focused on the Cuban Ivory-bill subspecies which he'd concluded was gone, after an unsuccessful search. Yet without any similar extensive search in the U.S., Lammertink was apparently willing to write off the North American Ivory-bill as well, based solely on the views of others who had already concluded such. For someone regarded as a leading expert to proclaim "no more hope" seemed almost irresponsibly loose and premature language. That was odd enough...
But I was even more surprised, 10 years later, when Cornell made their stunning announcement of the Ivory-bill's re-discovery in Arkansas, to see that Lammertink was part of the field team... someone I would've expected to be a skeptic, if there were to be skeptics... someone who's very academic reputation might even be compromised by finding the Ivory-bill alive 10 years after he'd summarily proclaimed it gone. Indeed Lammertink's association with the announcement and field work (his willingness to so publicly alter his view) was one of the many things which I thought lent the claims substantial credibility.
Lammertink never saw the Ivory-bill himself, but after declaring "no hope" for it a decade earlier, now acknowledged very suitable habitat for it in central Arkansas, and apparently became a believer... over the ensuing years as part of Cornell's Mobile Team he found more potentially suitable habitat across the Southeast (although, funny, these were the same locations that had been talked, rumored, and/or written about for six decades --- not like they were ever any huge secret). What a difference 10 years makes, I guess... from zero hope, to a mini-assortment of locales the species just might hang out.

The recent Ivory-bill saga is chock-full of ironies: Lammertink the doubter becoming a believer; Cornell, having done little on behalf of the IBWO since the 40's also becomes a cheerleader only when one of their own, Tim Gallagher, reports seeing it up close and personal. Meanwhile, Jerry Jackson, possibly the Ivory-bill's most vocal advocate for decades becomes among the first serious doubters of the Cornell claims. The best birders and ornithologists in America can't find the bird, yet amateurs do on occasion. Just as Cornell claims for Arkansas are fizzling, an unheard-of Auburn team announces even more IBWO encounters in an out-of-the-way patch of N. Florida... only to then go the same way as the Arkansas findings. The one-time birding gold-standard of repeatable sightings now barely means anything, while people apply physics to fuzzy video to try and convince skeptics. Every other place we look intensely, or so it seems, putative sounds and scrapings materialize as if by magic, but the 20" Houdini bird itself eludes us. It's almost as if we've stepped into some topsy-turvy, Alice-in-Wonderland Through-the-Looking-Glass-World... I thought I knew my way, but am now feeling less than sure-footed... and half-expect to run into the Red Queen any day now.

None of this means I think the Ivory-bill gone; indeed, for now, I'm persuaded of its presence (even as my confidence level shrinks)... I'm just less certain than ever, where, in what numbers, and for how much longer....
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-- Two Options... --

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As he begins wrapping up his blog series on the search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Tennessee, Bill Pulliam explains why he whittles down the mystery double-knock sounds from western TN. to just two woodpeckers... and why Pileated just doesn't seem to fit:

http://bbill.blogspot.com/2009/10/mystery-remains.html
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-- "Sightings" (Sam Keen) --

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It occurs to me, as a sidenote, with this extended coverage of the Tennessee search, that it might be fitting to make mention of author Sam Keen's tale from his small 2007 volume "Sightings," recounting a childhood experience from 1942 near Pikeville, Tennessee, of witnessing the possible shooting of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker by young hunters ("The Lord God Bird," next-to-last chapter of the book). Pikeville is in Bledsoe County (eastern TN.) FAR from the western locale of Bill Pulliam's activities, and though the storyline is true, Keen makes no pretense that his childhood memory of the bird possibly being an Ivory-bill (rather than a Pileated) has any strong credibility to it... but hey, still an interesting read, as is the rest of the slim volume of birding experiences.

ADDENDUM: Someone has asked if I could elaborate on the story Keen tells since they don't have access to his book... I hesitate to even lend it that much attention, but briefly...: as an 11-year-old birdwatcher in 1942 living near Knoxville, and enamored with the story of the Ivory-bill, Keen makes the acquaintance of a 17-year-old girl who tells him that the swamps around her home near Pikeville have Ivory-bills --- and she continues to insist so after he explains about the look-alike Pileated Woodpecker. Over an Easter vacation he gets to visit her home and venture into the woods with her squirrel-hunting brothers who, knowing of his interest in seeing an IBWO, spot one and shoot it for him. The rest is a bit of a blur... he retrieves the bird and takes some of its feathers for his collection but buries the badly-damaged carcass, uncertain which species it is, both thrilled by the idea it could be an IBWO, yet trembling at the thought that he might be complicit in the needless death of such a creature. In retrospect (the story was composed more than 60 years after the incident), Keen affirms he thinks that the bird was almost certainly a Pileated, but still has that gnawing question of what if?
(Pikeville, BTW, is not near any known prior historically-established population of IBWO.)
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-- More Spectrographic Analytics --

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Bill Pulliam's further analysis of Tennessee double-knocks, putting him somewhat at odds with Cornell's conclusions of same, here:

http://bbill.blogspot.com/2009/10/bass-notes.html
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-- Weekend Update --

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Nothing new revealed, but a brief audiocast of a recent Arkansas radio segment HERE summarizing the Ivory-bill search to date.

Bill P. continues his discussion/analysis of double-knocks in the Tennessee hinterlands HERE. It's not clear to me that Cornell has ever taken the Tennessee (or Illinois) data very seriously... in fact, it's not clear to me that overall they've taken any data except from South Carolina and Arkansas very seriously. Arkansas by now seems a bust (you know something is a bust when it's no longer referenced in direct mail fundraising ;-) --- though still worthy of independents making an effort there, and we'll have to wait and see how much of the S. Carolina evidence officials deem worthy of bringing to public attention. They'll no doubt politely acknowledge possibilities in several other states; just not sure their interest extends beyond the polite stage.

The above radio show says Cornell will now "focus and take stock" of the data they have on hand... for further publications. And no doubt they will... the question is, will they tell us anything of significance we haven't already known or surmised for a long time.
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-- But Does It Make You Cross-eyed? --

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From the "What-will-they-think-of-next" Dept.:



(...now if someone would just come up with an imitation sweet-gum tree costume, full of Cerambycid beetles.)
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-- Pondering Sonograms --

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Bill Pulliam's latest post begins some ongoing technical analysis of the curious Tennessee sounds.

We now have recent recordings of plausible IBWO sounds from at least Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee, and possibly a couple other states. What are the chances that after 60+ years of hide-and-seek there still remain small populations of Ivory-bills in 4 or more such disparate locales!?? Hard to fathom; VERY hard... If the bird is hanging on by a thread in such multiple locations, then some bright 20-something out there will need to do a PhD. dissertation that re-writes what we thought we knew about population dynamics. Could there be a 'central' primary locale of IBWO habitation from which the other locales are populated via juvenile dispersion?... virtually impossible to conceive of. What to make of the accumulated evidence then; is it all good, or all equally wretched?

Skeptics will disagree, but I also find it hard to fathom that ALL the recorded sounds, not to even mention all sightings, are bogus (non-IBWO), and if the truth lies somewhere in-between (most sounds bogus, but some from real, living Ivory-bills), then apparently we have no sure, clear-cut technological way to tease out the real from the unreal. Quite a dilemma. Does all of this gathered data do nothing but indicate just how unreliable and unreal the data is (are IBWO sounds a dime-a-dozen if you just run enough recording equipment over enough time in enough patches of woodland?), or does it show how amateurish our techniques are when it comes to tracking cavity-dwelling birds of the deep forest upper canopies? After five years the questions seem more pervasive instead of less-so. And I fear we'll have no more answers when an official final report is issued.

...Don't mean to be redundant, but want to again thank Bill P. for the thoughtful ongoing account of the Tennessee happenings which have instilled some interest in an otherwise boring summer for Ivory-bill news. And again I wish folks from South Carolina, or maybe other locales, were more willing to publicly air certain of their experiences, but, so be it. (They seem to fail to comprehend the benefits of 'open access' while neglecting to realize that silence is perceived in many quarters as a sign of no results worth considering.)
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-- Ghost Bird, Indeed --

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Bill Pulliam recounts a March 2009 morning of double-knocks in western Tennessee HERE (depending on your sound system, the DKs, especially the first two, can be difficult to hear). More analysis will likely follow.

Meanwhile, "Ghost Bird," the movie, continues its showings across the country, picking up awards along the way....

I've lost count of how many examples of possible Ivory-bill double-knocks and kents are now available to hear on the Web, let alone how many total have been reported by intelligent observers over the last 5 years. Such sounds are necessary or at least valuable backup and support for claims that the Ivory-bill has been seen in recent times... but they are not sufficient by themselves as evidence for the presence of the species. The fact is that both "kents" and double-knocks are simple enough sounds that they can be simulated by other sources, and are not clearly diagnostic for Ivory-bills alone. Worse yet, we have very little historical record of Ivory-bill sounds to even base careful scientific comparison upon (no Ivory-bill double-knock recordings and just one small sampling of kent sounds recorded in a single location, at a single time period -- really very little to go on). Nor am I convinced that one can even consistently discern through analysis, mechanical or man-made sounds from bird or nature sounds. DKs in particular can vary tremendously depending on the type, age, and condition of wood. Wind and weather conditions, and obviously distance are also confounding factors; and even different recording devices may introduce different variables into the mix.

In the course of Ivory-bill searches we need to hear double-knocks and kents, find foraging signs/bark stripping and old cavities, and... above all, to tie it all together, have sightings --- clear, unobstructed (even if brief) sightings by credible observers on the ground... in those very same areas of curious sounds. Without sightings of the bird in the flesh, or feather as-it-were, the rest of the evidence pales, even as it intrigues.

I continue to put faith in certain visual reports of the past, as well as more recent times, as indication of Ivory-bill presence. Meanwhile, stung by critics early on in this saga, official agencies have become very conservative in publicizing sighting claims over the last couple years. Also early on, skeptics warned that sending dozens of people into the field with hopes/anticipation of seeing an Ivory-bill would merely insure that many more 'sightings' would indeed be recorded... and, they would be meaningless. My concern, and a far greater worry I think, with so many individuals stalking through so many areas, is that many more sightings have not occurred. We can go for many years with 2 or 4 or 6 plausible sightings each and every year; but we ought be advancing to 10 or 15 or 20-25 sightings, if search techniques have validity. And then a clear photo, a nesthole, and then film... and hey, along the way, champagne and high-fives.
The official IBWO search is screeching to a halt, not for lack of evidence, but for lack of sightings of a creature that has indeed earned the name "Ghost Bird."
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-- Ornithological Oddity (OT) --

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'nuther quirky off-topic story I found too fascinating not to pass along....

Report from Britain of day-shift/night-shift bird species sharing the same nestbox (in this instance Barn Owl and Kestrels):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1220461/Nest-mates-The-kestrels-barn-owl-live-together.html

...seems bizarre, but maybe just evidence that we really can all just get along! (although poor baby Barn Owl doesn't appear thrilled with the arrangement).
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-- Crying Wolf? --

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Bill Pulliam opens the week with a long Tennessee post and some interesting tidbits (...including the possibility of Pied-billed Grebes 'kenting') here:

http://bbill.blogspot.com/2009/10/onward-in-fog.html

And thanks to all who have recently sent along to me some positive or optimistic feedback re: the IBWO searches... but... here's the thing: As indicated in previous posts the troubling part for me is not the lack of a glossy photo, the lack of a nesthole found, the lack of DNA evidence... no, the troubling part is that after 4+ years of supposedly methodical effort we are not seeing an increased number of sightings, especially not lengthier sightings and ones by people of established skill levels. More sounds, more brief and fleeting glimpses, or claims from individuals of uncertain knowledge/experience, yes, but at the 4+ year-point one might expect more. Nothing on an automatic camera, nothing resulting from a $50,000 reward offer, nothing from rapid followups to sound detections. Either the birds aren't there, or they are in such miniscule numbers as to be hopeless, or, the search planning and effort has been a travesty... unless the final reports, when issued, sway me otherwise, that is all I can conclude for now. And, sad to say, of those alternatives, I'd prefer to believe that the search process has been a travesty... but that would be too easy and unfair of a conclusion based on mere hindsight and judgment from a distance, so I can't do that either.

One reason many were skeptical early-on of the Big Woods claims, is that throughout the 50's, 60's, 70's several individuals closely followed up (on the ground) IBWO claims and always came up empty (as far as definitive confirmation is concerned); it happened again following Kulivan's 1999 Louisiana sighting. And now yet once more we go through it again... tempting, tantalizing, enticing hints of something in black-and-white haunting the forest depths, yet always just out of reach. At some point it gets more and more difficult to find fault with the doubters (even though I still think them wrong) and more and more easy to find fault with a process that can't 'close the deal.' The sheer expanse of the land tracts involved may account for the results, but it gets harder and harder to rely on that as a sole explanation, as well.
We all learn early in life, from a fable, that you can only cry 'wolf' so many times before people begin ignoring you (we believers are stretching the limits)... all I can say though, is that one ought not forget, as is easy to do, that at the very end of that famous fable... there really is a wolf.
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-- Fading Interest --

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The Ivory-bill story wanes. Readership at this blog is at it's lowest nadir in a long time, the last two "open threads" drawing no responses. Comments to Bill Pulliam's extended account of the Tennessee search have been few and far between (much to my surprise). The main BirdForum.net thread on the IBWO is running out of steam at close to 14,000 posts, and posts at IBWO Researchers Forum run slow as well. Meanwhile, Cornell seems to be tiptoeing away from the story (their final report could be an interesting read in word-parsing!). Even new claims, sightings, sounds, will likely evoke only yawns from an audience largely worn out.

Bobby Harrison and his Ivory-bill Foundation vow to plow onward as time permits. Mike Collins continues his quest in the Pearl River area, and other independents operate elsewhere with less publicity. Many still hold out the greatest hope for South Carolina's Congaree region; for myself, parts of Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana still seem the most interesting (but based on nothing concrete). Even the Missouri-Illinois-Tennessee corridor intrigues, as no one has ever adequately explained where the final Singer Tract IBWOs withdrew to as the Singer Tract was being cut over. If the birds flew north and established themselves it might readily explain why no one has seen them for 60 years, as they weren't looked for there.

Messages/sightings to my email continue to trickle in as well, but nothing at all substantive (which is to say nothing more substantive than what has gone before, and mostly less so). In short, despite many of us still believing some birds are likely out there, patience and hope in the broader public has largely run its course. If the birds are found it will be that much grander and splendid of a story now; INCREDIBLE to most minds... and, if they are never found it may be an albatross (so to speak) around the neck of ornithology and conservation for years to come.

Come January, it will be interesting to see how much field work (and where) is generated in the next search season.
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-- Knock-Knock, Who's There... --

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Bill Pulliam's tale of Tennessee double-knock intrigue continues here:

http://bbill.blogspot.com/2009/10/here-we-go-again.html

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-- Another Very Endangered Bird (OT) --

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What some folks will do in the name of science....

This video of the rare New Zealand Kakapo ground parrot has been making the internet rounds lately, but in case you missed it... enjoy:



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