Wow, there are so many episodes (for lack of a better term!) going back over the whole IBWO saga in just the last dozen years! I see over on Facebook they have brought up the “tmguy” or “Bill Smith” story from very early on. I don’t participate on Facebook (for all the reasons despisers of FB normally give), but I’ll try to offer a little off-the-cuff back-story here — I say “off-the-cuff” because I used to have quite a few notes on “tmguy” which I’m now too lazy to try to find, so will simply go on memory, which I hope is mostly right (but no guarantees):
Here’s the photo (he actually had a couple of photos, but this was the main one) that bought him his 15 minutes of fame over 12 years ago (OK, actually the controversy went on for quite awhile, though most everyone concluded this was a painted decoy or model of some sort, in an orange tree no less?):
“tmguy” stood for “that magic guy” because, as a hobby he was a stage magician; his full name was “William Frank Smith” and he emerged out-of-the-blue to claim many encounters with IBWOs in Florida. I think he was from the Lady Lake area of Florida, and at least some his claims/sightings (NEVER-ever verified) may have come from the Green Swamp area — though I may be confusing him with another claimant in that regard.
I communicated with him a few times, never getting very detailed or satisfactory answers; always a noticeable bit of evasiveness, though he’d stick to his basic storyline. He did seem to have some sincere interest and knowledge of wildlife in general, and while I could give him little credibility on his IBWO tales I was willing to look at the book he promised and promised and promised for 2+ years that would detail his Ivorybill exploits (including more pics) — the book of course never appeared; for a long time he had limp excuses for its delay, but eventually he just faded away after the beating he took online.
Even then I continued to follow his online behavior on aquarium forum sites that he frequented — he actually owned/ran an aquarium shop for awhile (in Tampa perhaps?, before it went out-of-business) — his fish comments were almost always reasonable, intelligent, helpful, upfront… but of course one can be an honest, upfront person I s’pose in one area of their life, and a total prankster/doofus in some other area. 8-/
To my utter amazement I just checked and much of his original site is still up! (though most of the pictures are long gone):
...note too, his URL was "bill is mad dot com" -- which I dare say many of us began taking literally!
That's about all I recall at the moment; if I think of more of pertinence or run across my old notes I might add more here later.
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....on a side-note: I don't know how many folks have had difficulty bringing up the Ivory-bill Researchers Forum site recently (I've had major difficulty with it for over 3 weeks), but I contacted one of the proprietors this week, so they're at least looking into it (I'm not sure how aware of a problem they even were?).
In fact if any reader here has been successfully loading the site, with no problems, the last 3 weeks I'd be curious to hear what browser you are using, what time of day, and are you using mobile or desktop...
