-- Replaying A Li'l History --

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From Christopher Cokinos' "Hope Is the Thing With Feathers":

"That same month, apparently on April 15 [1932], a Louisiana state legislator and attorney named Mason D. Spencer, a man with a penchant for bars and gambling, raised his gun, looked through the sight and squeezed the trigger. He collected his specimen -- triumphantly (and legally, for he had a permit) -- then prepared it for safekeeping.
"Officals in the New Orleans headquarters of the state's conservation department had scorned verbal reports of Ivory-bills along the Tensas River in Madison Parish, joking about the quality of moonshine available there. These officials could hardly believe their eyes when they found themselves looking at Spencer's specimen: a freshly-killed Ivory-billed Woodpecker...

"...In early April [1935], the expedition trucks [from Cornell] pulled into the only town in Madision Parish, Louisiana, that had electricity -- tiny Tallulah, due west of Vicksburg. There the men conferred with Mason D. Spencer, the attorney who had shot the Ivory-bill in Madsion Parish three years before, and with the game warden, J.J. Kuhn, who later would aid Tanner in his Ivory-bill fieldwork and who is remembered today, years after his death, as a 'remarkable' and 'marvelous' woodsman.
"Allen, Kellogg, Tanner and Sutton crowded into Spencer's law office in Tallulah and studied the maps of the area spread before them. Spencer spoke of wolves -- more numerous here, he claimed, than anywhere else in the United States -- and of panthers and black bears. A Southerner born and bred, Spencer cautioned the visiting Yankees about mosquitoes and the ease with which one can get disoriented in the forest bayous of the Tensas River. And, no doubt, he corrected their pronunciation. It's the Ten-saw, not Ten-sas. 'The talk,' recalled Sutton, ' ...kept us on the edge of our chairs. There could be no doubt that we were in a fearful and wonderful country.'
"Spencer also spoke of 'Kints' -- the local name for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker -- and bristled when Sutton pressed him on the matter. Sutton worried, as did the others, that Spencer could be misidentifying the common and widespread Pileated Woodpecker for the somewhat similar Ivory-bill...
But not Mason Spencer.
'Man alive! These birds I'm tellin' you all about is Kints!' Sutton recalled Spencer saying. 'Why, the Pileated Woodpecker's just a little bird about as big as that.' Spencer used his fingers to show a tiny bird, though the Pileated was in fact only somewhat smaller than the Ivory-bill. Spreading his arms, Spencer yelled, 'And a Kint's as big as that! Why, man, I've known Kints all my life. My pappy showed 'em to me when I was just a kid. I see 'em every fall when I go deer huntin' down aroun' my place on the Tinsaw. They're big birds, I tell you, big and black and white; and they fly through the woods like Pintail Ducks!' "

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-- ...Risking Belief --

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Bruce Tindall on the 'taunting' Ivory-billed Woodpecker:

http://www.versedaily.org/lastivory.shtml
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-- NPR on the Ivory-bill circa 1996 --

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Transcript of an old (1996) radio edition of NPR's "Living On Earth," with good cast of characters, on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (before the Big Woods story, and even before David Kulivan):

http://tinyurl.com/429c39n
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-- For Your Weekend Viewing --

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Scott Crocker's "Ghost Bird" is now up on the Web, in it's entirety (85 mins.), at this learning site:

http://learning.snagfilms.com/film/ghost-bird

(I'm assuming this is a legitimate showing... if it is pirated or otherwise unauthorized someone let me know that and I'll remove the link).
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-- Bookshelf --

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I suspect (hope) the very best books about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker may not yet have been written... but, of the volumes already out there touching on the subject, my favorites, in order of preference, are as follows:

1) The Search For the Ivory-billed Woodpecker -- Jerome A. Jackson
2) The Ivory-billed Woodpecker -- James T. Tanner
3) The Race To Save the Lord God Bird -- Phillip Hoose
4) The Travails of Two Woodpeckers -- Noel F.R. Snyder, David E. Brown, Kevin B. Clark
5) The Grail Bird -- Tim Gallagher
6) Life Histories of North American Woodpeckers -- Arthur C. Bent
7) Hope Is the Thing With Feathers -- Christopher Cokinos
8) Ghost Birds -- Stephen Lyn Bales
9) Stalking the Ghost Bird --Michael Steinberg
10) Ivorybill Hunters -- Geoffrey E. Hill
11) The Black Swan -- Nassim N. Taleb ;-)

For now, I continue to believe that the claims of certain individuals over the last several years (and prior), indicate persistence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, BUT having said that, of all the players in this saga, the two individuals who's overall judgment I most trust at this late point (and perhaps the only two!) are Jerry Jackson and Noel Snyder, both of whom, counter to my notion, appear extremely doubtful about continued IBWO presence.

Hopefully, individuals with the interest and opportunity to continue searching for the species will do so... while being under no illusion as to the magnitude of the task before them. Those especially who are already on public record as saying they've seen the bird may bear a special responsibility to further pursue definitive evidence backing-up such claims, lest their names go down in birding history forever with an asterisk by it (and, accompanying snickers)....
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-- Priceless... --

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A.T. Wayne's [19th century collector] Sample Price List as of July 29, 1893:


Ivory-billed Woodpecker, male and female    $22.00
Mississippi Kite, price reduced                           2.00
4 Carolina Paroquets, adults                            15.00
1 (Carolina) Paroquets, immature                      3.50
3 South Carolina Swifts @ .50                           1.50
1 Scott's Sparrow                                               1.25
1 Red-eyed Vireo                                                 .25
1 Yellow-throated Vireo                                        .30
1 Acadian Flycatcher                                           .35
1 Bachman's Warbler                                         2.50
1 Parula Warbler, Blue Head                              1.00
1 Black-poll Warbler                                             .25
1 Worm-eating Warbler                                        .50                       
4 Manau's Marsh Wrens                                    3.20

(from Phillip Hoose's "The Race To Save the Lord God Bird")
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-- Campephysics Principalis ;-) --

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Here's another odd photo (pileated woodpecker) showing how lighting can play tricks on perception:

http://natureinquiries.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/schrodinger%E2%80%99s-woodpecker/

The analogy to 'Schrodinger's cat' has also of course been made repeatedly to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Another, more-current analogy one might make though is to the Higgs Boson. I'm not competent to describe the technicalities of the Higgs, but simply put, years and years of tangential evidence has indicated its likely existence, yet no proof of it has been forthcoming -- one of the major goals of the much-publicized Large Hadron Collider is to establish the presence of this elementary particle (known popularly as "the God particle"... hmmm, echoes of "the Lord God Bird"). Both the LHC and its rival, the Tevatron collider in the US, have recently found rumored evidence (still being analyzed) for the Higgs, after decades of theorizing and failed searches. Hints, glimpses, findings, calculations, debates... but still awaiting proof.

I'll confess my bias: Schrodinger's cat is mostly an abstract thought exercise... I suppose I prefer an analogy to the Higgs, because so many of those in the know feel sure it is really there, and just a matter of time before that is patiently demonstrated... may it still be so for the Ivory-bill... not Schrodinger's Woodpecker, but Higgs.
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-- Something New and Something Old --

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Yet another Ivory-billed inspired work (novel) on the way, in July, here:

http://26yearstolive.blogspot.com/2011/05/of-wing-ivory-billed-obsession.html

(see also: http://www.ofthewing.com/new.htm )

And as a reminder as to why the bar of evidence for this bird is now set so very high (clear photos will be assumed inauthentic until demonstrated otherwise), this old 'anybody can do this' post from Mark Bailey:

http://hogfoot.blogspot.com/2009/03/ivorybill-photo-hoax.html
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-- 'Honking Woodpeckers' --

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A year+-old interview over at another blog (I may have linked to previously) with Jerry Jackson:

http://www.natureskills.com/birds/ivory-billed-woodpecker/

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-- Just Chillin' Out Today... --

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and perhaps through the weekend...


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-- Slither --

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Awhile back I mentioned a rehabber friend having two young orphaned Pileated Woodpeckers she was caring for. There's good news and bad news... The li'l tykes progressed well and when close to fledging were moved into a large pen. One quickly left their "box" nest for higher environs, but the other stayed behind, and unfortunately was taken by a snake that gained entry into the pen. Here's a pic of the other bird after "fledging" to give some indication of the size of the bird victimized (it was a big snake!):



One of the mysteries of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers has long been their possible low reproductive success --- and so I can't help but wonder how much snake predation was a significant factor.






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-- Times (and Prices) Change --

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Just a li'l story (I think I've told before), for those who have some spare cash to burn in this economy...:


I noticed this weekend there is a copy of James Tanner's original 1942 Ivory-billed Woodpecker monograph selling over at eBay for a coool $500+ (original copies come up for sale on eBay from time-to-time, and usually around that price).

Anyway, about 25 years ago I came across an original copy in a used bookstore where I live, but was unwilling to pay the exorbitant $60 they were asking at the time! I knew that Dover Press had a republished version for much less, and besides, it was also available at a nearby academic library.
So it wasn't until sometime after David Kulivan's 1999 sighting in La. that I decided I should own a copy and wrote to Dover asking how to order it. They wrote back that it had been out-of-print for many years at that point and there were no copies remaining in stock, NOR any prospect of it being reprinted since there was "no longer any interest in the topic." I thought to myself, 'are you guys NUTS!' :-o
Anyway, eventually they came to their senses and reprinted it again, and it's been available ever since (but with interest waning again, who knows for how much longer...). ------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- Upcoming --

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Dr. Geoff Hill will be speaking on the search for the Ivory-bill at Auburn's Louise Kreher Forest Ecology Preserve at 6pm tomorrow, Friday 5/20, followed by a showing of Crocker's "Ghost Bird" film. (If anyone happens to hear Dr. Hill's talk let us know how it goes.) And a reminder that "Ghost Bird" is also showing again on the 'Documentary Channel' at both 8:30pm and 11:30pm tomorrow night as well.

BTW, with all the attention to Scott Crocker's film, I'd be curious to learn if anyone knows whatever happened to George Butler's "The Lord God Bird" documentary? --- as far as I'm aware it was never completed (maybe for obvious reasons) even though it was shown in unfinished form many times... perhaps someone can clarify its fate and availability. (John Trapp's old review of it here: http://tinyurl.com/yepxj9g )
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-- "Why Most.... " --

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" There is increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims." -- Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis

I've had a link to this famous, often-cited JPA Ioannidis article in the left-hand column for about 5 years running, but perhaps it's worthwhile to draw more attention to it now --- Ioannidis's concerns are sometimes focused primarily on medical/clinical research (see this The Atlantic article), though much of what he details applies across the life sciences more generally, and on occasion, the physical sciences as well:

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

...and, a little more here: http://tinyurl.com/ygmupbc
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"Huhh, what? ...did I just hear an Ivory-billed Woodpecker"

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^
^...The New Yorker cartoon contest caption that SHOULDA been:

http://tinyurl.com/3nkfrzs

Also, this recent older (long) New Yorker piece by John McPhee on the Atchafalaya River may interest some:

http://tinyurl.com/8jqukp
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-- Just a Couple of Paradoxes --

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A classic old paradox from mathematics:

Suppose you glue a dime to the very middle of a half-dollar (creating two attached concentric coins), and then roll the half-dollar along a tabletop to make one complete turn. At that point the half-dollar (back at its starting point) will have covered a distance equal to its own circumference, AND the inner dime will also have completed one full turn, seemingly having moved ITS circumference in length... except of course the dime and quarter don't have equal circumferences.

Or, for a different, more geometric paradox see this old chestnut proving that the two sides of any right triangle, when added together, equal the hypotenuse:

http://tinyurl.com/5szrqbj
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-- "Ghost Bird" on TV --

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Sorry for the late notice, but received emails this morning that apparently Scott Crocker's "Ghost Bird" film made its debut on television last night on the "Documentary Channel;" a good opportunity for those who haven't had a chance to see it at an indie festival to take it in. I don't own a TV myself and don't know if the Documentary Channel replays its offerings or this was a one-time showing(?), nor if it will be on the Web anytime in near-future?
Addendum: in a comment below Christopher notes that the next scheduled showing of Ghost Bird on Documentary Channel appears to be this coming Friday, May 20.
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-- Wingbeats... --

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Note: Google's Blogger platform was down for 48+ hours (making the posting of new blogposts or comments un-doable), but appears to be working once again....

Generally speaking throughout the avian kingdom, larger birds have slower wingbeat frequencies than their smaller cousins. Louis Bevier's original 2007 analysis for PIWO vs. IBWO wingbeat frequency follows in that vein, for any who haven't seen it:

http://web.mac.com/lrbevier/ivorybilled/Wingbeat.html

There is NO firm data for what the range of wingbeat frequency for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker should be. None, just speculative conjecture. The one specific piece of old Singer Tract audio (of a bird flapping) that is sometimes alluded to for analysis is useless and meaningless, with no accompanying video to know WHAT is even doing the flapping --- but even presuming it is an Ivory-billed Woodpecker it is at least as likely that the bird is merely flapping to maintain balance on a tree, or fending off an intruder/interloper, than a recording of actual flight (though it may be 'hopping' from one branch to a nearby one). This specific area of analysis is fraught with problems and assumptions (and uncontrolled variables), but I believe Bevier's analysis, in this instance, is as good as is out there. Thusly, for now, I'm more interested in video clips of purported IBWOs that show birds flying below or at the low end of the purported range for PIWO wingbeat frequency (which also is not well-established).

But short of a truly definitive photo or video (requiring no analysis, beyond proof of authenticity), what I'd really like to see at this point are more high quality and lengthy sightings that come from multiple experienced, credible observers (lone observer claims simply are not taken seriously by most of the birding establishment at this point), and preferably, then, repeated by others (photos, video can come later, if at all).
So far, it ain't happenin' :-(
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