Thursday, March 28, 2024

-- $$$$ --

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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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Tuesday, March 26, 2024

— Intermission —

——————————--——————

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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Monday, March 25, 2024

-- A Li'l Louisiana History --

 ———————-------------—————

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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Saturday, March 23, 2024

— 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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Thursday, March 21, 2024

-- 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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Tuesday, March 19, 2024

— 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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Saturday, March 16, 2024

— An Aside —

 ——————————————--———

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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Wednesday, March 13, 2024

— Ongoing Problem —

 -----------------------------------------------------

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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Saturday, March 09, 2024

— Something Current, Something Past —

————————————————

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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Wednesday, March 06, 2024

— 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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Saturday, March 02, 2024

-- 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?)



Wednesday, February 28, 2024

— 2024… A Notable Year —

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There is so much historical information on the Web (including in prior years on this blog) pertaining to Ivorybill history and searches that I try to now avoid re-treading that material here, letting readers get it from elsewhere. But this is 2024, so worth noting that it’s the 25th year since David Kulivan’s 1999 La. sighting and the 20th anniversary (just passed) of the Gallagher/Harrison Arkansas sighting — perhaps the 2 pivotal events of the modern IBWO saga… almost a bit hard to fathom. 20+ years of hope, anticipation, letdown.


I don’t want to spoil the mood, but will yet again stress why the frustration of this saga proceeds… Somewhere (and likely multiple places) a large, loud species that must search for, and eat, food EVERY single day, must enter and leave cavities EVERY single day, must fly in the open EVERY single day, must (to still be with us) somewhere successfully breed EVERY single year since the 1940s, is somehow evading clearcut photography in a time of huge technological advances — evading even ONE indisputable photo in all that time (and no, it need not be crystal clear; the piss-poor quality of Fielding Lewis’s Brownie camera was adequate for I.D. purposes). You can slap all the numbers and measurements and analysis you want on other evidence, but it just won’t rule out all other possible explanations the way genuine video/photography can. 

For now, the question of the IBWO’s persistence remains for most scientists, but if ever finally documented, the far greater, more interesting/pressing question will be, WHY did it take so long… (most of us already have answers for that and the answers may pertain to any future conservation measures taken).


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Sunday, February 25, 2024

— Sunday Navel-gazing —

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Around a week ago I pulled out an old file drawer of IBWO stuff buried in a closet (much of which I actually thought I’d thrown out long ago!), and began reading 15+ year-old back-and-forth correspondence with various key people. So much time, so many discussions/debates have passed. It was fascinating to read things/discussions I hardly remembered ever having (and all the folks who thought this would be easy). But one downer thing that struck me from this trip down memory-lane was that several of these folks have since died (and others have left the IBWO debate altogether in frustration), and even among those still around, many are well over 60 now and who knows how much longer they (and I) will be here. I feel a lot less confident that the Ivorybill will be definitively documented in my (or their) lifetime — we keep doing similar things over and over again and expecting a different result (not that I know any better methodology). Often in some of the correspondence (and elsewhere) someone is voicing the view that documentation is ‘just around the corner’ or surely would come ‘next year’ or within a few months… and 15+ years later here we are still always turning new corners! ...forever sounding exaggerated (or, to the skeptics, delusional) in how close we are :(( A small smattering of people seriously looking for a needle in a vast haystack, analyzing the heck out of any scrap of evidence to come forth (and not-so-oddly reaching whatever conclusion they had basically started with).

Anyway, March arrives soon and hey, once again juvenile Ivory-billed Woodpeckers could thereafter be emerging from nestholes and foraging with their parents in remote vast places before leaves return to the trees, but will anyone be there, in the right place at the right time, to see and photograph them? Anyone???

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Wednesday, February 21, 2024

— Quick Note — +Addenda

 ——————————————————

Like so many others, I’ve now abandoned Twitter and Musk’s mismanagement, and am moving to Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky platform where I am:

@cyberthrush.bsky.social


Bluesky is still getting revved up (but it looks to eventually be the biggest, most-active alternative to Twitter), and birding posts for now are still on the light side compared to Twitter (I refuse to call it “X” ;) Don’t know how much I’ll even use it near-term, but if I encounter really significant IBWO news will likely post it there, before getting written up for the blog.


Addendum:  as long as I’m passing along notes, Mark Michaels has his first brief blog post up since seeing the 16-min. indie film on him, “American Grail,” at the Big Sky film festival (Missoula, MT.):

https://projectcoyoteibwo.com/2024/02/18/update-from-big-sky/

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ADDENDUM2:

Don't want to start a new post yet, so will just add here that Paul Fischer has posted an annotated frame-by-frame version of one of the Proj. Principalis La. drone videos on Facebook (involving 2 birds):

https://www.facebook.com/paul.fischer.52/videos/1597031354368474?idorvanity=179784035376368


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Sunday, February 18, 2024

-- Celebrating Amateurs... --

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Hahhh…. I’ve often enjoyed Jack Hitt’s stories on NPR’s “This American Life” and in the New Yorker, and mostly enjoyed a book he did several years back, “Bunch of Amateurs” (involving how cults of amateurs get involved in various mysteries) which included a chapter on the quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker -- a chapter I was somewhat less enthused about. Anyway, I recently stumbled across ABA birder (and IBWO-searcher) Rick Wright’s 11-year-old review of it, and thought, ‘wow, how did I miss this, it’s a great review’… only to reach the end and find that MY own comment was the first one listed! 

https://blog.aba.org/2013/02/hitt-bunch-of-amateurs.html


I don’t remember writing this, but chuckle at how much I still agree with it, and ‘amateurs’ may still be the ones with the most time, opportunity, and inclination to find the IBWO... moreover, additionally today they have access to more technology and ‘professional’ tools and networking to perhaps make it happen.


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Wednesday, February 14, 2024

-- GISS Birding -- +Addenda

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Quick apology to long-time readers that I keep re-hashing things already discussed here long ago... 

Have been reading and enjoying Malcolm Gladwell’s 20-year-old bestseller, “Blink,” basically about what I often call “intuition,” though he mostly calls it the subconscious, and several more recent volumes use yet other terminology for the same subject -- it all reminds me of an aspect of birding, essentially done rapidly at a subconscious level, which is even briefly cited in Gladwell’s volume.

Anyway, first, two illustrative experiences from decades ago in my own birding life:


1)  Once when much younger I was with a very experienced birder when I pointed out a large-ish black speck in the distance, saying that it might be interesting… he looked at it for probably less than 2 seconds before saying, “oh, it’s a Turkey Vulture”… I was pretty surprised at the time, and inquired, “You can tell from here that it’s a vulture and not a hawk?” and he responded, “well, yeah”… I continued, “and I suppose you’re guessing it’s a Turkey Vulture just because they’re so much more common here than Black Vultures.” I think he was a tad insulted, and replied “No, not guessing, it IS a Turkey Vulture” and then he explained the basic and few traits he was seeing, even at great distance, that clearly defined it as that species and no other; traits that registered on his mind immediately (...and now do on mine as well).


2)  Some years later I was on an outing, carpooling with birders and as we drove down a road adjacent to a hedgerow, one of the most experienced in the group suddenly shouted out, “Whoa! stop the car, Orange-crowned Warbler!”… the car stopped, we backed up and everyone got looks of a very nondescript, smallish, Orange-crowned Warbler foraging through the hedge, just feet in front of us, through a cluster of leaves (an uncommon bird for our area), but how the spotter had recognized it in such a fleeting moment he couldn’t even explain, except that 90+% of all warbler (and other) species were immediately ruled out in his mind in that quick glance leaving only a few options.


What I’m referencing here is often called the “GISS” or “jizz” of a bird — GISS for ‘general impression of size and shape” though even more characteristics, like flight-style/movement and colors, may also be involved — and it is how a great deal of field birding is actually done by experienced birders… and done successfully in but split seconds! Rather than looking for a myriad of details or wordy field marks noted in a field guide, a more overall ‘gestalt’ experience with the bird is enough to ID it accurately.

Pete Dunne, one of my favorite birders, has written extensively on it (especially in his wonderful "Essential Field Guide Companion"). I don’t know what his current attitude is toward the IBWO (HEY Pete, chime in if you care to! ;), but he was one of the few “name” birders who, early on, stuck his neck out to voice support for the claims Cornell made in the Big Woods. He recognizes (as do I) the power of “sightings” coming from multiple experienced birders versus the constant mantra of skeptics that, well, everybody makes mistakes on occasion (and granted, my cognitive psychology background also lets me appreciate that view!).


Skeptics will say, GISS is fine-and-dandy, but you can only have it with birds with which you have familiarity or experience… and NO ONE living today has such experience with the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, so there is no GISS for IBWOs. But this isn't entirely true, for like my second example above, GISS also allows you to ELIMINATE choices in an instant, and in the instance of an Ivory-bill there may only be a few possibilities needing elimination before IBWO is the one remaining (also, past descriptions of IBWOs, as well as the Singer Tract videos do allow for some GISS characteristics). Yes, mistakes can still be made (especially by inexperienced observers) or there may be genetically mis-plumaged birds, but plenty of claims remain that are difficult to discount easily other than by the fallacy of ‘overgeneralization’ — i.e., 90+% of past claims have proven bogus, therefore this claim is surely bogus.

Sometimes I almost feel like the entire IBWO debate boils down to the "all people make mistakes, and thus ALL IBWO sightings are mistaken" crowd versus the "experienced people can ID this species in an instant and on at least some occasions have" crowd. (There are though other categories: people of less experience but claiming lengthier or better views of the bird, and still others claiming deep analysis of video or auditory evidence confirms its existence, apart from sightings.) Anyway, the same birders who readily accept GISS birding when it suits their purposes, challenge it when it doesn't suit their narrative.


I've written of GISS birding several times in the past (so I already know how cynics will respond to all this), but will end with a David Sibley quote, that I've used before, and is included in "Blink" (though, in fairness to David, I know he would say that what applies to "most of bird identification" does not apply to the unusual cases of especially rare birds):

"Most of bird identification is based on a sort of subjective impression — the way a bird moves and little instantaneous appearances at different angles and sequences of different appearances, and as it turns its head and as it flies and as it turns around, you see sequences of different shapes and angles…


"All that combines to create a unique impression of a bird that can’t really be taken apart and described in words. When it comes down to being in the field and looking at a bird, you don’t take the time to analyze it and say it shows this, this, and this; therefore it must be this species. It’s more natural and instinctive. After a lot of practice, you look at the bird, and it triggers little switches in your brain. It looks right. You know what it is at a glance."
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ADDENDUM:
This is off-topic, and I normally wouldn't bother pointing to it, but someone just sent it my way, and it does illustrate the craziness in the internet birding world these days (not just the IBWO arena), and hey, maybe someone out there wants to sleuth around and figure out who Jason Mann is!?:

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ADDENDUM2 2/16:


As long as I'm citing non-IBWO stuff this also is too good not to pass along:

On Facebook Sean Tuttle posts this wonderful, inspiring 1/2 hour film on conservation efforts for the Red-cockaded Woodpecker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYcly7FSC9I


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