Tim Gallagher's seminar online

On Cornell's web site, there is video of a 9/12/05 Ivory-bill seminar given by Tim Gallagher. I found the second half fascinating.

Gallagher finds time to share some long, colorful stories about people getting shot in the foot, cottonmouth snake scares, Sparling's airsickness during a helicopter search, etc. Very curiously, he ended his prepared remarks without even mentioning any of the "robust" sightings after the first two; he didn't mention any audio evidence; and didn't mention that after April '04, yet another full season of intense searching has passed without a good photo.

During the Q-and-A session, there were some skeptical overtones to some of the questions. In fact, the first questioner asked why we still don't have a still photo of the bird. Gallagher responded with "You gotta go there", mentioned the cottonmouths, and claimed you can't see very well. He also mentioned that the team's cameras, even in standby mode, seemed to take about a minute to power up. I'm not sure I'm buying that modern camera technology is the problem, since the Cornell Singer Tract expedition captured great pictures using massive, clunky 1930s-era cameras.

Another questioner directly asked Gallagher about other confirmed sightings, and Gallagher said "Confirmed?", paused, and then appeared to carefully choose other words to describe the other reported sightings.

Throughout most of this long seminar, I didn't notice any editing of the video (maybe I missed some). However, it appears that something has been edited out during the Q-and-A session (right after the question about Hurricane Katrina). If any reader knows what (if anything) is missing, please email me at tomanelson@mac.com.