But the most sensational and controversial "rediscovery" was the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Campephilus principalis in North America. The rediscovery has split the ornithological community, with many convinced that photographic, video and audio evidence confirms the survival of the species in Arkansas, while others insist the blurry pictures and recordings of "kent" calls and double-knocks are open to other interpretations, implicating leucistic Pileated Woodpeckers, Blue Jays, snapping twigs and distant gunshots. Survey teams are currently scouring the area.Could it be possible that Ivory-bill skepticism actually extends far beyond the "lunatic fringe"?
My answer is a resounding "yes"--I know for a fact that there are lots of highly-qualified skeptics out there; I know many of their names, and I'm confident that they won't remain publicly silent forever.
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And when the November 2005 sighting that includes details of head and neck coloration plus bill size and length, well seen on perched bird, becomes public, I'm sure it will just be yet another wierd pileated to you, right?
I do find some of the sightings to be the most convincing, but not entirely so. None of the evidence convinces me, and that a layman can easily see the Pileated points in the stills from the video DOES bespeak of a Cornell team that might already realize the video is "elvis" the Pileated but feels that the project might collapse if they had to make a retraction right now. Maybe they have an IBW woodpecker nesting right now and are keeping it quiet. But Tom is right on in his analysis and please
think about writing a book on this!
As an engineer myself, I see Tom carefully and pretty dispassionately going over the evidence to date. He's not mean about it, we're all having fun and
again consider the point that this video is still being touted as the real thing. Then think about why
that is. /Paul, New Paltz NY
Reading the A C Bent books on the IBW really brings home, to me, what a niche specialist this bird really is/was. There were also plenty of southern forests where the IBW never nested even before the 20th Century. Why was this?
In the Singer Tract, there were something like 19 young fledged to adulthood in about 8 years of study
during the 1930s. That's not a lot
when you consider many birds die in their first year. I do believe the bird may have persisted into the 1950s or perhaps even later.
The California Condor is a slow breeder but excellent parent, with a life expectancy of 35+ years.
Yet they were headed for extinction in the 1980s, with numbers as low as 21 birds. These
were birds that didn't have isolated pockets of population, some in Florida, some in Louisiana, etc. Yet they would have gone extinct by the 1990s.
The IBW layed more eggs than a condor, sure but have a 12 year life expectancy. How could they have avoided inbreeding as their population in isolated swamps dwindled to tiny numbers? How could they have produced viable young for many generations, enough
to avoid the inbreeding that would have spelled their doom? Shall we hang all our hopes on the nomadic nature of the bird helping it find other families of IBW in other tiny habitats? What did the IBW have in its favor over the California Condor that only survived because of captive breeding programs? With a bird so
niche specific that even in its best days, most of the South was unsuitable for it... how did it hang on past the 1960s?
I'd hang up my hat if they produced a photo.. I'd leap and
jump... but I'd take many second looks thanks to Tom's great analysis. /Paul, New Paltz, NY
And when the November 2005 sighting that includes details of head and neck coloration plus bill size and length, well seen on perched bird, becomes public, I'm sure it will just be yet another wierd pileated to you, right?
Along with the photo that never got taken, right?
where can you find updates like the one you state? why are they not making any findings public?
everyone knows they are down there looking for this bird. why not tell people they found the bird?
i don't get it. if there was a november sighting then why have they waited so long to tell people? i don't like this secrecy.
many birders are anxiously awaiting any news and they keep it all secret. geez.
One can only hope they found the bird in November and won't document it until after the nesting season for fear of the birds being scared off their nest.
But I have a bad feeling this was just another glimpse. December is the start of the mating period for this bird, though generally later.
In the writings of Arthur Allen and others who saw and documented the bird in the 30's and 40s', during the nesting season, the IBW
male did disappear for hours... but this was after sometimes 20 minutes of observation.
I mean, these birds are not like
swallows in migration, they should stop from time to time for many minutes and allow copious photographic evidence to be obtained. They aren't catching insects on the wing! These kinds of sightings were routinely obtained in the 30s and 40s, even by the boy who was the last
to see the IBW. He passed the last Singer Tract IBW female for many days in a row in 1944 in an old ash tree passed over by the loggers and shown to him and many
others by artist Don Eckelberry, who drew the bird, the tree and
one of the boys with him watching the bird. No glimpse was this.
12 yr old Gene Laird saw the bird for an entire week and "sometimes sat and kept it company." I guess this bird
was less flighty than the IBW's being sighted today?
/Paul, New Paltz, NY
That rumored November sighting was not by a member of the official search team but the observer is supposedly cooperating with the team in terms of revelation. It is rumored to have been a bird seen over a much longer period than the earleir sightings, perched and flying between trees. Repeat: "rumored." Would be fantastic if true, but rumors are rumors. This rumor has appeared online at least once in the last month, including the name of the observer.
It makes sense that whatever results they have, positive or negative, will not be trickled out as they come in but will be released in larger announcements after they have had time to evaluate, compare, compile, and interpret, whether they suggest the bird is or is not there. They are doubtless amassing a phenomenal quantity of data regardless of whether they are finding any solid, Nelson-satisfying evidence: thousands of snag and hole inventories, scaling documentation and measurements, and gigabytes of audio data. Even if they have gotten the "million dollar shot" and have multiple solid sightings, I would imagine they are going to hold off until they have at least a preliminary estimate of how many birds and what parts of the area they inhabit. If they are finding nothing that requires the presence of anything there other than the normal, common residents of that habitat, then they will of course hold off unil the season is over and they have gone through everything again before making an official declaration that "we done been skunked."
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