Response to Laura Erickson's take on Fitzpatrick's plenary

First, once again, I want to commend Laura Erickson for her commitment to open debate. Yet again, a couple of days ago, she prominently linked to my blog from hers, even though my opinions tend to be quite different from hers.

Laura Erickson wrote this blog posting after John Fitzpatrick's plenary address last night. As I did once earlier this week, I've cut/pasted her blog entry here in its entirety, and I've added some comments in red.

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''Wow!'' ''I didn't realize the video was that strong.'' ''After this, I honestly don't get why people have been so skeptical.'' ''I didn't realize there were so many different pieces of evidence.''

Was any new evidence or any new video analysis presented?

Those were some of the comments I heard when leaving John Fitzpatrick's plenary address tonight. He gave pretty much the same talk I heard in Minnesota at the Carpenter Nature Center two weeks ago--here's the abstract:

''Rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and its conservation implications.''

John Fitzpatrick addresses AOU August 25, 2005

In Feb 2004 a kayaker in e. Arkansas spotted a bird he thought was an Ivory-billed Woodpecker. His hunch was confirmed 2 wk later when 2 experts saw the bird at close range very near the original site. This began a concerted, clandestine effort by a large partnership of individuals and organizations, spanning the next 14 mon, to obtain tangible evidence plus information about population size and distribution. A series of sightings in Apr 2004 culminated in an alert searcher capturing a brief but historic video, in which a bird we interpret as an Ivory-billed Woodpecker is flying away from the approaching canoe. Extensive acoustic inventories of the Big Woods region in 2004 and 2005 also suggest that Ivory-billed Woodpeckers are present, but are extraordinarily quiet. I will review the evidence for persistence of Ivory-bills in North America beyond 1944, and will summarize the latest details on our ongoing project to study the newly discovered Arkansas bird(s). I will discuss the importance of this discovery for the American conservation psyche, emphasizing its crucial implications for bringing back the great forests of se U.S.

John emphasized that their conclusion about the existence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker was based on several things:

John did quite a bit to clear up misunderstandings about the elements of the reported sightings that have been misinterpreted by many skeptics.

I fail to see that anything's been cleared up about the reported sightings. In the Sparling description below, only two minor details are new to me---the "clown like face" (whatever that means), and also that on the crest, the red began behind the eye. Both of these new details could apply to a female Pileated Woodpecker as well as an IBWO.

In fact, all of Sparling's descriptive text could describe a female Pileated Woodpecker with an abnormal white patch. Again, like each of the seven sightings, Sparling's description below still omits these four of five key fieldmarks: the white dorsal stripes, the white neck stripe ending before the bill, the longitudinal black stripe on the white wing underside, and the pale bill itself.

In Sparling's case in particular, the omission of any mention of bill length or color is very troubling. He obviously saw his bird very well, noting specific details about the crest (unfortunately, those details could apply to a Pileated as well). On page 42 of "The Grail Bird", Nancy Tanner says of IBWOs "They're extremely regal birds, with that long, long, brilliant white bill and the gleaming yellow eyes". Also beginning on page 42, the late Roger Tory Peterson is quoted: "They did not look as much like pileateds as I had expected; with long recurved crests of blackest jet and gleaming white bills, they seemed unreal birds--downright archaic."

I know that the bill of an IBWO could be hard to see at a distance, but in Sparling's point-blank look, it surely should have stood out. Since Sparling didn't even mention the bill, I'm skeptical that his bird was an IBWO.

He noted that the original Sparling description included:

Huge woodpecker

''Like a pileated on steroids''

Unusually long neck

''clown like face

Narrow pointed red crest, ''not bushy like a Pileated's''

Crest black in front, red began ''behind eye''

Large white patch on back where wings came together.

White on wings tinged ''like parchment'' along edges

''herky jerky'' behavior

One important thing John did was to publicly and formally apologize to the people (unnamed, but people seemed to know who he was talking about) who should have been informed about the sighting before announcement of the paper in Science. John explained that nothing had turned out as they planned. Here is the timetable as they planned it:

Submit to Science for release in late May 2005

Inform key colleages after acceptance of paper

Invite many participants to Arkansas announcement

BUT

Monday, 25 April 2005

3:00 pm--Science accepts paper

9:00 pm--The Leak!

Tuesday, 26 April 2005

11:00 word spreading like a raging virus

12:00 containment still an option

1:00 containment no longer an option

2:00 Can we accelerate publication?

3:00 Yes, but decide by 4:00--revisions due tomorrow

4:00 Press conference arranged, ''all nighters'' begin

Wednesday, 27 April 2005

Tate visits Archbold to review data

2:00 pm final revisions sent

Evening--all converge in Washington, D.C.

Thursday, 28 April 2005

Press conference at Department of Interior.

So John's address fully addressed my own concerns, and apparently allayed those of a lot of others. Now I guess I'm done debating the merits of the sightings--as far as I'm concerned the species is definitely still alive, and my attention will be focused on conservation issues again.
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On Wednesday, after the audio data was presented, Laura posted this:
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I think if I were on wither the Arkansas records committee or the AOU records committee, for now based on this analysis, because of the historical importance of the sighting, I'd vote to place it on a hypothetical list....I think that it was probably a mistake of Cornell to announce their work in Science, and present it as definitive, rather than using the more careful language in these papers presented today.
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Since I don't see that Fitzpatrick mentioned any significant new information, I'm puzzled as to why Laura's opinion would switch from the IBWO as "hypothetical" Wednesday to "definitely still alive" Thursday.

If any other AOU meeting attendees found Fitzpatrick to be persuasive or unpersuasive, please let me know why at tomanelson@mac.com. I'm particularly interested to find out if Fitzpatrick took any questions, and if so, whether any of these were addressed.

In my opinion, if anything, the audio evidence presented Wednesday actually weakens the case for the IBWO's survival in Arkansas. I've explained my reasoning here.