Blogging pause

My plans are not firm, but after today, I may not do any blogging for the next few days...

"When will Cornell retract?"

In recent days, I've suddenly seen a number of people expressing different versions of similar thoughts (again please note--when I post other people's words on this blog, it doesn't necessarily imply that I agree with any or all of those words):

Emailer #1:

When do you foresee Cornell retracting their 100% certainty regarding the existence of IBWP's in Arkansas? And what scientist would use a 100% certainty claim in a professional statement!?

Emailer #2:

More and more people are doubting this reported sighting of an Ivory-bill. Some people that I know were 100% convinced that this was the real thing (how could Cornell claim this if it wasn't true?) when it was first anounced now have serious doubts.

How many days, weeks, months without verification need to pass before they admit that there are no Ivory-bills in that area. It's a real dilemma for Cornell, The Nature Conservancy, etc.

Refugeforums poster "stumpy waters" (see previous blog post):

So at the end of this winter, when there is still no proof, is everyone going to settle on the fact that this is a hoax, perhaps file a suit against these "scientists" and Cornell, and repay the taxpayers all the money we've wasted on this?

Look at all the people over there looking for the bird right now... and they still can't find one.

IBWO-related refugeforums post

Arkansas duck hunters are continuing a spirited IBWO-related discussion on this refugeforums thread.

In this November 15 post, "stumpy waters" has questions for a poster called "AGFC Keith", who is said to be a spokesman for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (please note--when I post other people's words on this blog, it doesn't necessarily imply that I agree with any or all of those words):

Keith - I sent the following email below to Mr. Henderson and he forwarded the email on to someone else who replied. I got a very cordial email with a lot of informaiton (including the hint that there was "proof" the public had not seen, which makes no sense to hide "proof of the existence" of a rather useless bird??), but the simple question I asked was not answered. I responded back, but the question still has not been answered.

Perhaps you could help.

******ORIGINAL EMAIL****

I do have one more question.

How long will the AGFC continue to support the woodpecker hoax (forgive my negativism), without someone actually providing proof positive that the bird exists?
(Most folks do not agree that the blurry video and the sound recordings are proof positive.)

******SECOND EMAIL*****

I really appreciate all this information.

I have seen and heard all the evidence. If there is something that has not been released to the public, why no do that right now and dispel all disbelief? As amazing as it may sound, many folks including other ornithologists believe there is not enough evidence to verify the birds’ existence.
Yes, two scientists who are now making a lot of money over this claim to have seen the bird. The great bird watchers they are though, they couldn’t get a photo. They could be honest and really think they saw the bird, they could have done it for the money, or they could have done it knowing that it would at least strongly curtail hunting if not have it closed in this area. Only time will reveal their motivation.

I don’t want to start an email war here. I asked a simple question that was not answered and that’s all I was looking for. There is a lot of money being poured into this to recover a bird no one can even find, to recover. Look at how many people are in those woods on a daily basis now looking for this bird, yet they cannot find him. How long will this be allowed to go on without someone bringing a photo to the table that relinquishes all doubt? Are we going to keep going for the next 100 years based only on what we have now? At what point will we say either there was no bird, or the one bird is now gone?

At some point there has to be a responsibility check placed on the money being spent. I just want to know what that timeframe is.

More spin

This article from the Dayton Daily News contains some more spin on the Gallagher/Harrison sighting:

The two men endured the most difficult conditions one could imagine. They probed through a swamp infested with mosquitoes...And then came the moment of success.

Well, Gallagher/Harrison evidently did have to paddle around some obstacles, but they didn't see their bird until shortly after they crossed under Highway 17, where Gallagher says "the din from semis was almost unbearable". In "The Grail Bird", Gallagher's account of the trip mentions that it was chilly at night (it was late February, after all), and the word "mosquitoes" doesn't appear.

Skepticism in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Some Ivory-bill skepticism is expressed today by Bryan Hendricks in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (registration required). Some snippets (the bold font is mine):

Recently, I wrote about a 60 Minutes segment on the ivorybilled woodpecker.
...
If that program showed the only solid evidence of the ivorybill’s existence, then that evidence is mighty thin. Connie Bruce of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology confirmed that I had indeed seen all there is to see, so far.
Look, nobody wants that bird to be in those bottoms more than I do. If the ivory-bill really lives in Arkansas, than it’s one of the greatest conservation stories of our lives. But if 60 Minutes showed the only proof there is, then excuse me for being at least skeptical. I’m not an expert birder by any definition, but when I saw the Luneau video, I thought the underside of the bird’s wings appeared to be those of a pileated woodpecker.
...
During our conversation, I asked Connie Bruce if she truly believed in her heart that an ivorybill has been seen in Arkansas. She was initially evasive, and she tried to apply various contingencies to her answer. On the third attempt, I told her it was a yes-no question only. After a long, anxious pause, she said “yes,” and she sounded sincere.
I believe it, too.
How else can you explain all the time, money and effort that the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Nature Conservancy are committing to confirm the bird’s existence? Why else would the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission stake so much of its scientific credibility on the tenuous possibility of the bird’s existence? They wouldn’t if they weren’t at least 90 percent sure the ivory-bill is there.
Either that, or they’ve all been taken in by the scam of the century, which is equally hard to believe. Scientists are so maddeningly cautious that they are reluctant to say the sun came up yesterday unless they have years of empirical data to prove it. They wouldn’t touch this if they didn’t honestly believe it’s true.
We just need some solid, indisputable evidence to erase all doubt.

Email from Phil Tongier

I just received the following email from Phil Tongier:

Sorry that I'm sending you so many emails the past few days. However, besides the Sparling quotation, (that grew from a 3/4 pound Bluegill to a 8 pound Largemouth Bass), your point on the roost hole also keeps coming back to mind. Again, correct me if I am wrong, wouldn't there have been a rather noisy, active, hard to miss roost hole for this king of woodpeckers if it still lived? Seriously. People in 1935 were not incredibly more savvy with woodscraft than folks today. We now face the waning months of 2005. From early 2004 to now we have NO evidence for an active roost hole. In 1935 they basically trotted into the woods, found IBWP's, set up camp, and filmed away. They did take time out to band a juvenile and photograph this incredibly wary woodpecker on the cap of an expedition member.

I admit that when I originally heard all the news about the rediscovery I was literally astonished and couldn't wait to see COLOR photos of the woodpecker that I had only seen in aging black and white film clips from the Kellogg, Tanner, et al. expedition as a teen so many years ago.

The evidence and the pseudo-science that followed appalled me. Your remarks on mediocre bits of evidence not being sufficient to take the place of one solid fact were very well made. Here I was expecting a National Geographic type expose' and I received evidence that wouldn't fly in Kansas. I have better proof that flying saucers visited McMinnville Oregon in the '50's than I do for IBWP's making it into the 21st Century.

To give credit where credit is due I predict that you will be the fellow that perservered in the face of BS from Cornell and some folks in Arkansas (who were instrumental in creating a tent revival movement that hasn't a shred of tangible evidence to back it up). I am pleased to say that I have communicated with a solid scientist who obviously wants IBWP's to be alive like any other naturalist. I expect that we would both be much more reserved regarding the matter if this information on a rediscovery were coming from near the Gulf of Mexico or off the Mississippi River.

You are doing a hell of a thankless job that is crucial to the heart of natural science. Mr. Hendershot seems to have his head screwed on straight too.

With appreciative respect for your efforts,

Phil

Phil Tongier is an amateur naturalist living in Salina, Kansas; his professional background is in psychology and law. A previous email from Phil is here.

Questionable quotes from Tim Barksdale

Cornell search team member Tim Barksdale said some pretty controversial things in this May email. Below I've included some snippets from Tim in black, along with my comments in red (the bold font is mine):
-----
I am 100% convinced that David Kullivan had a pair of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in the Pearl River in 2000.

One hundred percent?! To review, Kullivan said he saw two Ivory-bills on April Fool's Day, 1999. Massive follow-up searches turned up nothing. Being 100% convinced at this point seems wildly optimistic.

[In Arkansas] we found several cavities that clearly were made by Ivory-bills although these showed no signs of recent use.

Clearly?!

But - I doubt that if a bird is trap-lining a large feeding territory in Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee that it is the same bird that is using the areas in Arkansas.

It just doesn't seem reasonable to postulate a single Ivory-bill with a regular feeding territory hundreds of square miles in size, spread over 3-4 states.

Our bird in Arkansas, fledged from somewhere within the past 15 years. So there were 3 Ivorybills at the time of fledging. Could the source pair have been in the Pearl River? Yes. Could the source pair have been in a remote remnant forest swamp in northern Florida? Yes.

I agree that it is theoretically possible that an Ivory-bill was born in Florida and then inexplicably flew hundreds of miles to settle in marginal habitat in Arkansas. I just don't think that it's likely enough to seriously consider.

Let things in Brinkley settle down a bit. Then plan on visiting either Cache River NWR or White River NWR. We had indications but never confirmation of more than one bird in this vast area of over 300,000 acres. Unfortunately, only sections of this area are undisturbed and there are no virgin tracts. Few key areas still remain to be searched. But we have only used transects in 8% of this huge area.

On this point, Barksdale confirms my point #1 thinking here.

Sibley's "The Grail Bird" review

Check out this review of "The Grail Bird" by David Sibley, dated June 26, 2005. Here's a snippet (the bold font is mine):

One of the consequences of Gallagher's telling of the human side of the story is to remind us how tenuous eyewitness accounts can be. The searchers, including Gallagher and Harrison, were so wrapped up in anticipation and emotion that it must have been very difficult for them to judge the sightings objectively. And many of the sightings were such brief and unsatisfying glimpses that I was left with more questions. Why is this bird so difficult to see? Where else does it go? The ivory-billed woodpecker remains ghostly and mysterious.

My only serious complaint about the book is its repeated jabs at the scientific community. Gallagher accuses ''them" (unnamed ornithologists) of bias, of not mounting effective searches for ivory-billeds, and of practicing what he calls ''the opposite of what true science should be." But true science, objective and unbiased, has to be based on concrete, testable evidence. Since 1944 there has been no conclusive evidence to go along with the sightings.

Some scientists took on the challenge. Reports were analyzed thoughtfully, legitimate debate took place, and in some cases extensive follow-up searches were mounted. Gallagher repeatedly minimizes these efforts and implies that scientists were anxious to declare the bird extinct. This is absolutely unfounded.

Gallagher's bias is clear. He is a self-described ''believer," and his emotional approach, powered more by faith than evidence, is the essential counterpart to science. I suppose it makes a better story when he can cast someone as the bad guy, but it is unfortunate that he has chosen ornithologists for that role. He can be triumphant in his success, but he has no grounds to attack the scientists for their scientific methods.

Note that about a month later, Sibley said in a New York Times article that "the evidence they've presented falls short of proof." As far as I know, Mr Sibley has been publicly silent on the Ivory-bill controversy since late July.

Jerome Jackson's endorsement

Jerome Jackson endorsed this blog today with these words:

I agree with many of the points raised in this blog and these arguments deserve to be heard.

Jerome Jackson has been called "the world's foremost expert on the Ivory-billed woodpecker". He's the author of ''In Search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker"; and he's also listed as an author of both the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and Pileated Woodpecker species accounts in The Birds of North America.

Jackson on hybridization

In some circles, it's been speculated that the abnormal Pileateds in the search area may actually have been Ivory-bill/Pileated hybrid birds. I posed the question to Jerome Jackson, who replied:

While an Ivory-bill/Pileated hybrid might be possible, it is highly unlikely. Intergeneric hybrids are rare and when they occur we often later find out that the generic distinction isn't so sound after all. The genus Campephilus and genus Dryocopus are not at all closely related. Recent studies suggest considerable molecular difference.

Jackson's words on this issue should carry some weight. As you may know, Jerome Jackson has been called "the world's foremost expert on the Ivory-billed woodpecker". He's the author of ''In Search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker"; and he's also listed as an author of both the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and Pileated Woodpecker species accounts in The Birds of North America.

The smoking gun?

In my personal opinion, at this point, Cornell's rediscovery story has pretty much crumbled to dust. I've been looking carefully at the various retellings of Gene Sparling's February 2004 sighting, and to me, the evidence overwhelmingly points to a mis-ID of an abnormal Pileated.

I think this article contains the smoking gun. Since Sparling publicly posted these words before he was influenced by Cornell, I think this description is closest to reality:

Sparling also wrote in his posting, “I also (and I hesitate to say this) saw a Pileated woodpecker that was way too big, the white and black colors seemed to be reversed on the wings, and the white was yellowish off white. You birders know what is inferred, but I don’t have the conviction to say.”

Now what Ivory-bill would have "yellowish off white" coloration?!

By the time Cornell published their paper in April of this year, the yellowish tinge had moved to the edges:

Field marks noted by G. Sparling were the bird's unusually large size compared to pileated woodpecker, peculiarly pointed red crest with black anterior edge, long neck, and extensive white on lower half of folded wings showing slight yellowish tinge along edges "like parchment paper."

In "The Grail Bird", the "yellowish off white" had become "brilliant white", but the bird now has "greenish staining on the lower part of its back". The bird now has "two white lines extending up the back to its crested head":

When he saw the bird's unique color pattern--brilliant white on the lower half of its back, with two white lines extending up the back to its crested head--he knew immediately that he had never seen this kind of bird before. Inconspicuous in his kayak, he pulled into a secluded spot and sat watching it for almost a full minute. The woodpecker was so close he could see the minute details of the feathers and even some greenish staining on the lower part of its back, perhaps from going in and out of a roost hole or nest.

In North American Birds, Dec 04-Feb '05, page 198, the bird's bill becomes "light-colored", but the white lines extending up the back are again missing:

The bird landed on a tree about 20m in front of his kayak. Though he lacked binoculars, he noticed that it looked different from a Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileated) and posted a description of the bird--which was observed perched on the side of a tree--to a website for canoe and kayak enthusiasts. His description included unusually large size, extensive white on the folded wing (with an "odd yellowish " color to the white at its edges), a light-colored bill, and a crest showing some red. He described the movements as jerky and animated, with a cartoonish quality.

Finally, in a Sept 2005 Natural History article, Harrison writes that Sparling told him in February 2004 that his bird had "a big white bill".

I think this Arkansas Times article, published 5/5/2005, is notable because it refers to Gene Sparling of Hot Springs as a "non-birder".

There are some very interesting parallels between Sparling's bird and an aberrant Pileated seen by Noel Snyder in 1979. Like Sparling, Snyder saw a large woodpecker that appeared to show a lot of white on its folded wing. Snyder then used his binoculars and found that on his bird the white triangles on the bird's wings were in fact cream in color, not pure white.

Overall, I think it's quite disturbing that there are so many versions of Sparling's story. Sparling's original version appears to describe an abnormal Pileated, and Cornell admits subsequently finding abnormal Pileateds in the area. If Sparling really did see an abnormal Pileated, I think the chances are vanishingly small that subsequent searchers in the area glimpsed birds that actually were Ivory-bills.

Search crew leader named

This article names Ken Levenstein as the "search crew leader" for this year's Arkansas Ivory-bill search. Levenstein is a graduate student from Arkansas State University. The article names three other ASU graduate students as participants in the six-month effort.

According to Levenstein, the search teams "would endure several nights of camping at some point during the project".

Emails from Arkansas

Earlier this month, a reader from Arkansas sent me some interesting emails. I've posted the contents here. A couple of snippets:

Never in my life have I seen so much knee jerk reactions take place with so little evidence to back it up.
...
I, like most others here have no problem with the Bird being here if it is & protecting it if it is here, but it is starting to appear that things may not be as they seem...

"ivory-bill flew within 6 or 8 feet"?!

Some questionable information is found in this article from today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Below are some excerpts, with my comments in red (the bold font is mine):

As you no doubt now know, the “experts” had declared the ivory-billed woodpecker extinct and ridiculed those who thought they had seen one.

This is an oft-repeated claim, but I've yet to see it backed by actual names and quotes.

At 1:15 p.m. on Feb. 27, 2004, though, an ivory-bill flew within 6 or 8 feet of Bobby and Tim’s canoe, then tipped its wings so that they saw its distinctive markings.

Cornell's Science paper says the distance was actually 20 meters.

They [Tim Gallagher and Bobby Harrison] kept their sighting a secret from all but their closest associates, and for the next year made return trips. They often dined at Gene’s Barbeque, world headquarters for the woodpecker seekers, but they never ate together and rarely spoke to owner Gene DePriest.

Well, somehow these people and many others also found out...

Disgruntled duck hunters

In this forum, some duck hunters are discussing birder-related changes in the Cache River area. Some snippets:

I just don't understand all of it ... If the darn thing(s) have survived with duck hunters all around, why would anyone in their right mind think that should be changed???? If it worked so well ... don't try to fix or improve on it
...
The very people who own the private ground that we could not flood have now quit their Commercial Duck Operation and are now going to run a Commercial Birder Guiding Operation on the very WMA that could not be flooded for duck hunters before?
...
tell us about the woody peckerwood guiding permits for wma's. tell us why it's ok for one group to make money on a wma by guiding and it's not ok for another to do the same.
...
I grew up in Des Arc, and as such I had several friends who hunted ducks on the Cache most of their lives. They and their fathers, grandfathers, etc. have done so almost religiously for decades, and now life as they knew it has changed forever in the name of a bird which no one is truly sure whether they have seen or not.

News services fooled by model Ivory-bill photo

I've long thought that this tidbit was interesting:

On the day of the grand Ivory-bill rediscovery announcement last April, this blogger says that all the news services mistakenly listed the photo of a model Ivory-bill as a photo of the living, rediscovered Ivory-bill.

"Flocks of birders expected"

Here is an Ivory-bill article posted today at the Northwest Arkansas Times. Some snippets:

“Everything hinges on this winter,” said Larry Mallard, the manager of the White River refuge. “The momentum is either going to be there or not.... We really don’t know.”
...
Brinkley Mayor Billy Clay said he hopes there will be more sightings this winter to quiet the naysayers. He sees tourism associated with the ivory-billed woodpecker as a way to revitalize the Delta town whose population has declined.

“It’ll definitely be an asset,” Clay said. “We’ve got to do something over here ; hospitality is what we have to sell.”
...
A welcome center at the edge of Bayou DeView is on tap for the area, Clay said. Depending on funding, it could open in 2007. Once the center and some improvements to local roads are in place, the city will likely draw even more bird watchers, the mayor added.

I don't know what the planned "welcome center" is. If it's an expensive building, I think it would be wise to wait for the definitive photos before breaking ground.

Egregious spin?

In my opinion, this article by Cornell searchers Elliott Swarthout and Ron Rohrbaugh contains some pretty flagrant spin:

1. "Our search, though intense, covered only about eight percent of the 550,000 forested acres in the Delta region."

We're being encouraged to believe that 92% of the Big Woods hasn't yet been searched, but that's not at all true. When Cornell says "covered" in this sense, I think they are referring only to the 4750 hours spent searching 145 square kilometers in one particular way--that is, by walking global positioning system–guided parallel transects spaced 50 to 55 m apart.

Beyond those hours, an additional 17000+ hours of other search time was also expended, and I would bet that plenty of time was spent searching in that "officially uncovered" 92% of the Big Woods.

2. "Given that the incredibly high stem density in this habitat made seeing even common Pileated Woodpeckers difficult, we have plenty of hope that a breeding pair of Ivory-bills simply has yet to be found."

Well, that same stem density didn't seem to hinder Tim Gallagher's view nearly as much. On page 149 of The Grail Bird, he writes this of the Bayou de View area:

Everywhere we turned, we saw pileated, red-bellied, red-headed, and downy woodpeckers, plus a few yellow-bellied sapsuckers.

On page 153, Gallagher goes on to say:

And we had been seeing dozens of pileateds and pointing them out right and left, commenting on their field marks and constantly asking ourselves whether we could possibly mistake them for an ivory-bill.

Other sources of double-raps

As I've written previously, Ivory-bill searchers in the recent past have been excited by "tantalizing double-rap" sounds that turned out to be gunshots.

An article in North American Birds (Dec '04 through Feb '05) contains this sentence (page 205):

Other observers have reported double-rap sounds in the Bayou de View, but in some cases, these sounds have been traced to trees knocking together, to Red-bellied Woodpeckers or to Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers.

Note that people have been hearing tantalizing double-raps in the US, over and over, for 60+ years. In zero percent of those cases, an Ivory-bill has subsequently been found in the area. In 100% of those cases, when the source of the sound was positively identified, it was something other than an Ivory-bill.

Reading between the lines?

Regardless of their beliefs, we're still at a point where public officials likely don't feel free to say "I don't think Cornell found an Ivory-bill". I think we may need to "read between the lines".

To me, the following points indicate some official skepticism of Cornell's Ivory-bill reports:

1. As I noted here, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has assigned a recovery priority number of 18 (lowest) to the Ivory-bill. Note that this number has actually been lowered since September of 2002, when it stood at 17! If the USFWS completely believed the Ivory-bill rediscovery story, I think they'd assign the Ivory-bill a recovery priority number pretty near 1.

2. Why is Pintail duck hunting allowed this fall in the area where the Ivory-bill sightings were reported? (Note that Tanner said "In flight the Ivory-bill looks surprisingly like a Pintail"). If the decision was yours, and if you believed the Ivory-bill sighting reports, would you allow Pintail hunting in the small area where all the sightings were reported?!

3. Check out the carefully-chosen wording in the story here.

Wingbeat frequencies all over the map?

1. In this article, Cornell spins the Luneau bird's wingbeat frequency of 8.7 flaps/second as "proof" that the bird is an Ivory-bill. Never mind that they have only one data point on the wingbeat frequency of an Ivory-bill, and they also offer no data on the expected wingbeat frequency of a startled Pileated weaving through trees in initial escape flight.

2. In this article, Bobby Harrison claims a much higher wingbeat frequency of 14 flaps/second for the "Ivory-bill" in his video , which he says is "of poor quality".

3. On page 201 of the Dec '04-Feb '05 issue of North American Birds, Jim Fitzpatrick's field notes say:

The bird was an incredibly strong flier. It did not flap any more often than a Pileated, perhaps fewer times than would a Pileated.

Ok, so we've got three claimed Ivory-bills. The first, a startled bird weaving through trees, flaps slightly faster than some Pileateds measured in straight-line flight (at up to 7.5 flaps/sec). The second (which may not even be a woodpecker), flaps very much faster than our limited Pileated data or our one Ivory-bill data point. The third bird is estimated to flap at the same or slower frequency than a Pileated.

We have very limited baseline data here, along with wingbeat frequencies of unidentified birds that are all over the place. In my opinion, current wingbeat-frequency arguments are not at all helpful in making the case for the Ivory-bill rediscovery.