— April Dr-r-r-r-rumroll.... — +Addenda

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“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul”  — Emily Dickinson

One million and counting.... The Google stats I get for this blog seem a bit whacked, but nonetheless, perhaps worth marking the occasion: looks like this month (possibly even this week) the blog will cross over 1 million hits since its inception, almost 19 years ago. That's a LOT of anal-compulsiveness! (just kidding ;)) 

Especially grateful to the intrepid folks who have stuck it out since the very start, through thick-and-thin, through college or kids or divorces or hernia operations, hip replacements, COVID, and a zillion blurry pictures and unresolved debates; through 4 Presidents and 6 Speakers of the House, through the rise of Taylor Swift and pickleball, and the fall of George Santos! Through Seinfeld re-runs, Bitcoin debacles, the mystery of Malaysian airliner MH370, the deaths of Steve Jobs and Robin Williams and near-lynching of Mike Pence, and of course all the USFWS hemming-and-hawing.... yeah, we been through some thangs… zaniness, vitriol, hopes-raised/hopes-dashed, confusion, intrigue... and, well, more-to-come!…. 😮

Waaaay too many people have made contributions to the discussion over the years for me to try to cite them, but will at least acknowledge 3 names whose work/writings have been especially important to me: Bill Pulliam (deceased), Chuck Hunter, Chris Haney (perhaps not coincidentally, Chuck and Chris were both acquaintances of Bill). Thanks also to those who've quietly helped behind-the-scenes with miscellaneous things over the years, and who need to remain anonymous (you know who you are). And, whether we agree or disagree on specific matters, thanks finally to all who sincerely try to understand the plight of this iconic species and inspire others to do so as well! 

Meanwhile, early on, an experienced British birder labelled those of us who pushed the “Ivory-bills persist” storyline, “stringers,” for endlessly stringing people along — and that was in the early years; he must reeeeally be super annoyed with me by now, all these years later! Keep on reading, and I guess I’ll keep on annoying ;)) 

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ADDENDUM 4/2:

Dwight Norris has a longish summary post for his IBWO Facebook group musing about where we’re at after 80 years of Ivory-bill searching:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/179784035376368/permalink/7671707159517314/

…he also muses a bit about the Saluda, SC. claims, including a notion that it could be a case of the principal on-site reporter involved basically doing a dissertation on human gullibility — that was actually a thought I'd had early on, but after investigation and for too many reasons to explain, dropped from consideration (...IF that actually turned out to be true, I hope his professor/advisor at least awards him an "E" for Effort).

Anyway, I suspect Dwight’s post might stir a flurry of thoughts/responses, so maybe take a gander at it and any followup.

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Addendum, to the Addendum:

At the moment there are 55 comments to Dwight’s post, causing him to further elaborate now with a 2nd separate posting:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/179784035376368/permalink/7675402589147771/

…not sure how long this might drag out and I had hoped not to spend more time on what has been one of the most embarrassing episodes of many embarrassing episodes in the IBWO saga (…so I won't say much here, but might continue to link to discussions elsewhere) …btw, John Williams’ FB page, if you care to visit, is here:

https://www.facebook.com/john.d.williams.503

 …and includes links to a couple of his prior non-IBWO blogs:

https://motionhealth.blogspot.com

https://bestdriver.blogspot.com

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-- $$$$ --

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In the last couple months 2 people have emailed me asking about the monetary reward for finding IBWOs… soooo, I imagine others exist with the same basic question...

The original Cornell/Nature-Conservancy reward was $50,000 for anyone who could lead biologists to a living Ivory-billed Woodpecker (likely a nest, roosthole, or foraging site) — just sending in nice pics/video is not enough; you must take appropriate people to the bird! I think, but am not absolutely positive, that that reward still stands…?

Currently, Matt Courtman is individually also offering a $12,000 reward to anyone who can lead him to a living IBWO (he’s based in La. but willing to travel elsewhere).

If anyone knows of other active monetary rewards in play or has any other pertinent details, feel free to pass along.

Frankly, as I told both emailers, IF you get great pics and videos of living IBWOs you can likely make more $$$ in the long run off those pics, and storyline, speaking engagements, articles, interviews, possible book, etc. than you’ll get from the offered rewards! Not to mention the sheer reward of making your mark forever in future scientific books/history! ;)

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— Intermission —

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Nothing Ivory-bill today, just some entertainment… Years ago I once started watching some live bird nestcams that quickly became completely addictive! (...so I quit). My favorites were owls, hummingbirds, and European storks, but there are dozens (maybe 100s) of other species available (some are recorded videos of past nestcams, but I most enjoyed the live ones).

So anyway, it’s time for you all to suffer the addiction… you can start with these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DdUcz8ZSBY  (Allen's Hummingbird, California; especially superb)

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/cams/barred-owls/#  (Barred Owl)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYDOcq4FJYE  (storks, Hungary)

[...perhaps interesting to imagine an active IBWO nest finally being found and USFWS putting a remote camera on it for ongoing viewing over the Web, in hopes of satisfying gawkers and dousing any misplaced desires of birders to traipse through swamp and muck looking for it.]

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-- A Li'l Louisiana History --

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I don’t bother passing along a lot of purely historical-related links, but with all the emphasis on Louisiana these days will cite this recent video in tribute to George Lowery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBBcM9nLue8

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— Note —

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 OK, have gone through and deleted a slew of comments (to various posts) that were simply too sophomoric, too uncivil, too un-useful, or too non-credible to keep (it’s a shame this topic always seems to devolve this way)… and have slightly raised the requirements for commenting here (now, you must have a Google acct.), but if that doesn’t raise the level of responses enough I’ll go to full-scale moderation (where comments are not posted until they are approved). For the past several years more readers have sent me messages via email rather than through the comment channel, and I s’pose that is because they don’t want to be subjected to the counter-comments/snark they may experience... but then also, potentially useful discussion is lost.

Was planning to do an “Open Thread” next week (as many blogs do) where folks could discuss or ask about anything IBWO-related that was on their mind, and discuss among themselves, but now feel like that’s not even worth trying for the moment. :((

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-- Duly Noted --

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On Facebook (few days ago), Fred Virrazzi (…in his inimitable style ;)) offers up a nice, somewhat succinct technical overview of IBWO wing-beat arguments/data here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/ivorybillnews/permalink/1772131359973393/

(I won’t vouch for every statement/conclusion Fred makes here, but his thrust is spot on, and the limited data we have from Mexico's Imperial Woodpecker, which he mentions though not spending a lot of time on, has always seemed a real exclamation point to this body of work.)

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— Blasts From the Past —

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March 19 (today) is the 16th anniversary of the death of great science-writer/inventor Arthur C. Clarke. Just maybe a good time to recount his “three laws”:

1)  When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2)  The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3)  Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

....I can't help but also be reminded of another "Arthur".... philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's "3 stages of truth" (which used to appear at the head of this blog): 

“All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

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— An Aside —

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Recently, I was a bit surprised to see Dwight Norris, who runs the largest of the various IBWO Facebook groups, and who I don’t often see pass judgment on matters there, end a posting by writing, in reference to the publicized IBWO claims for Saluda, S.C., that he “and many others consider it to clearly be a hoax.” [If you don’t know about the Saluda story I won’t squander time explaining it here, other than to say it is chockfull of problems.]  I assume(?) that Dwight means he believes the first-hand individual making the claims is hoaxing, and not the secondary individual, J.W., who has been the face reporting the story to the public (though at every opportunity that he has had to walk away from the story, he seems to double-down on it, despite some of the published material being retracted). 

I am always on the watch for hoaxes, and don’t rule it out 100% in this case, but my own take has been that this is a more complicated, nuanced circumstance, involving mental/psychological aspects that place it in a different category than simple “hoax” (at least relative to some of the prior straight-out IBWO hoaxes that have transpired). I won’t discuss those nuances, as it would be too speculative and uncertain, but simply submit that “hoax” might not be the best, or most accurate, word for it (...always possible, though, that time will prove me too generous here!).

In any event, I don’t believe Ivorybills are extant in South Carolina… but IF they are, surely not in Saluda County. Evidence (reeeal and definitive evidence) that they persist in Saluda, let alone have been there for over 2 decades, would be perhaps the most incredible story in the entire annals of American ornithology. I’ll gladly settle for an incredible story coming say out of the Atchafalaya or Apalachicola or Pascagoula; no reason to reach for the fantastical.

Speaking of the swamps, for any who've never seen it, will conclude with this old video tribute to our special bird from long-time IBWO searcher/enthusiast Mike Brown:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/179784035376368/permalink/5294385227249531/

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— Ongoing Problem —

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Hugely annoying that after all this time people continue posting pics and videos on YouTube, forums, news pages, and other websites labelled as Ivorybills that are clearly Pileated Woodpeckers… every time I get perturbed by one of these mis-IDs I have to stop and remember how many uncorrected pics are now floating around the Web easily leading innocent people further astray, and never getting corrected. It feeds the trope that EVERY clear picture of a large U.S. woodpecker is, lo-and-behold, a Pileated, and IBWOs come only in a fuzzy variety...

One rainy day, a while ago, I looked up “Ivory-billed Woodpecker” under the ‘image’ category of a couple of search engines, and did some rough math: close to 4% of the images appearing were obviously Pileated Woodpeckers — this wasn’t a scientific survey or measurement, and I suspect the larger, more reputable sites get it right more often than that (it’s the smaller sites and press outlets that mess up most, but NOT always). 4% of pics being wrong isn't a huge amount… but enough to create never-ending exasperation. 

And THIS is aggravating: once many years ago I wrote a reputable, well-trafficked site about a mislabelled PIWO pic they had used in a widely-viewed article, and asked them to correct it. The response I got was that they had taken the picture from another site, so it wasn’t their fault that it was mislabelled, and besides the two species look almost alike, so for purposes of the article and their readers it really didn’t matter much! (no, they didn’t correct the caption) — that is the mentality we’re often up against folks!… 

Oy vey (another recent example).....

[...By the way, for anyone needing to ingrain in their mind the look of Pileated Woodpeckers, this Facebook group offers lots of pics & videos of this wonderful species:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/74736493236 ]

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— Something Current, Something Past —

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A new hour-long podcast with Mark Michaels and producer Andy Sarjahani of the indie film "American Grail" on the IBWO and the Proj. Principalis search:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFZrdAr0ceg

The film has its own Facebook page here (where you can expect future showings to be listed):

https://www.facebook.com/americangraildoc/

...Meanwhile, I seem to be living in nostalgia these days while waiting for simultaneously new, significant, and credible evidence to appear (hey, it could happen)… 

Perhaps the most fun I had on this blog back in the day was for a few weeks in 2007 reading the posts of a blogger going by the tag “Ivorybill Septic” — he (or she, but I think he) wrote a parody blog skewering the rest of us on all sides who blogged about the Ivory-bill, and he was welcome brief comic-relief from the vitriol surrounding the discussion at the time (the name was a take-off on Tom Nelson's then "Ivorybill Skeptic Blog").

Before he disappeared into the shadows I tried deducing, using “content analysis” of his postings, who Ivorybill Septic was, and felt I had narrowed it down to 2 possible culprits: last initial “V” in Washington state (at that time), or “D” in Colorado (I know their names, just won't give them here), but could never quite nail it down… Just a fun mystery, never resolved, but cool to employ content analysis to attempt it. 

So anyway, the jig’s long up, if you’re out there somewhere I.S. (or someone who knows of them) maybe let me know who you were and what you're up to these days, writing humor for the New Yorker, or SNL, or what!? ;) (I’ll keep your identity confidential if that’s what you prefer), but back at the time, you made my day... and 17 years later I can't type "Ivorybill Septic" without chuckling... ('cuz somehow, all these years later, the name still seems fitting!).

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— Those Were The Days ;) —

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I’ve been rummaging through old files searching for things (that are shareable) that might be interesting or entertaining to post… I don’t usually share verbatim correspondence at all… but… will make this one, lone exception! In early days I received a number of short scammy, hokey letters that were more annoying than interesting, but late in the process, in 2012, finally got the longest letter... that was a hoot to read!! So much so that I sent it along to a few individuals at the time for their entertainment, and am pretty sure they forwarded it on to some others. So a few of you have seen this long ago, but for the rest of you, enjoy… (I copy it fully verbatim below, but have struck out all name/place identifiers):

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“your website is the first one that came up, it seems pretty extensive and comprehensive. my name is XXXXXX, I am a "homeless" person, sometimes I consider myself that, sometimes I don't. I don't panhandle. but my mom sends me money, and I work a part-time job, but I live in the woods in XXXXXX. I used to live out in the woods in XXXXXX but my wife left me and after I got out of prison I came down here. I have been living in the woods for quite some time.

to make a long story short, I am not really a birder, but if you live out in a tent in a swampy area in XXXXXX, you see a lot of birds. most of the birds I see, I have no idea what they are, that is why I like snakes so much, it is pretty easy to catch snakes. but for awhile, I lived with my wife and kids and we had netflix and I watched the documentary about Ivory bills, and I thought to myself, I have seen those birds out at my camp on a regular basis, I see them in pairs, and sometimes I see them in 2 pairs, a mating couple in one tree and another couple in another tree. I have seen them way more times than I have seen Pileated WP's.

I didn't realize there was such a hoopla about them. To cut right to the chase, I could talk forever since I type really fast and I have nothing better to do, I am going to tell you this. I can't guarantee you that if you came to where I am at, that I could show you a IBW, but what I can guarantee is that I can show you evidence that they have been where I am at very recently, that is 100 percent. and i think you would have a 90 percent certainty of hearing them if you stayed there long enough. I have only seen pileated WP's once, and it was a pair of them. I have seen the IBW's multiple times.

you don't know me from shit. so I will tell you who I am. I used to live in the woods way out in XXXXXX, I was friends with a guy named XXXXXX, who was written about in the book "Coming Into the Country" by John McPhee, I lived for a while in a little town called XXXXXX, not by choice, my wife couldn't handle living out in the bush. If you randomly called people in XXXXXX, you would get a mixed bag of opinions about me, there would be some people that would probably say I was a devil worshipper or something crazy.

regardless, what I am telling you is true. if you want to come to XXXXXX, I will meet you. below are my absolute indisputable conditions and I will not waver on them.

1. you will meet me at a hotel that I choose after you rent a car. I will drive the car and you will have to either be blindfolded or just stare at the floor. I am absolutely not going to tell you where we are going. it won't matter in the end, you are going to figure it out anyway, you aren't a dumbass.

2. I want at least a little bit of money. I don't feel bad about asking that. you try being a homeless person camping out in a tent in a swamp, it is not fun. and you are going to supply me with beer, and I can drink a lot of beer.

3. you can't have a cell phone or a GPS, I am going to search your bags. I have zero doubt in my mind that you are going to figure out where we are at eventually anyway, but I want to trust you. I live in these woods, and when this is all over, I will probably still be living in these woods. I don't want a bunch of jackasses spoiling things for me.

4.If I even vaguely suspect that you tell anyone else about this, you won't ever hear from me again. whether it is you that meets me or someone else, I am one paranoid, suspicious, careful bastard, and I don't give a shit about you or anybody else.

Those are my conditions. my phone # is XXXXXX.”

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No, I never contacted the fellow, so don't know if I missed out on seeing some Ivory-bills, but am pretty sure I missed out on some wonderful beer stories (which I may or may not have lived to tell)..... ;)

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-- Video Re-run --

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I already linked previously to this slowed, frame-by-frame, annotated version of one of Proj. Principalis's drone videos (added: showing 2 birds at one point) that Paul Fischer posted on FB, but will link to its YouTube posting as well (...since I'm a little surprised at how few views it's had on YouTube)... and it can also be enlarged to full-screen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EEBeo4BhI4

[Fischer did not take this video himself, but simply worked with it.]

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Addendum:

A complete sidenote: since writing last Sunday’s trip-down-memory lane post I’ve been looking up a few other folks who have dropped from the IBWO scene over the years, and the one person I can’t find any updates on is Mary Scott. Mary ran one of the largest, most popular birding sites on the Web, “BirdingAmerica” (now defunct) back in the day, and essentially broke the whole Big Woods Arkansas IBWO story before even Cornell had a chance to announce it, but then eventually disappeared into the ether... So just curious if anyone knows if Mary is still around and if so what’s she up to?

(...no one has responded to this, so I'll add that my own vague memory is that Mary had retired to Arizona, or perhaps New Mexico, and was occasionally leading local birding outings, and avoiding the IBWO debate, but that was over a dozen years ago?)