There's been some recent, serious Internet discussion of the photo available at this web page.
It's drawn some hopeful comments from "believers" such as "...there is a strong indication of a light-colored area along the lower part of the wing" and "...it doesn't look like a pileated, something about the shape both of the crest and of the bird itself."
Do you find that photo at all convincing?
If not, can I safely infer that you "have an agenda", that you've never actually birded in the field, that you quite probably loathe puppies and small children, etc etc? ;^)
(If I right-click on that photo and look at "Properties", I see that it is less than 6k in size. I'm told that to reach this tiny size, you'd likely have to dramatically degrade any original photo, whether it's digital or a scan of a paper photo.)
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I hope the real searchers have the expensive hi zoom cameras to get a conclusive photograph. It is interesting that in 1971 someone in Texas had a photograph that conclusvely looked like an IB and it was dubbed a hoax. Now, all you have to do is have a grainy low-res picture, which could easily be a pileated, and it generates hope. he could have put a stuffed bird up on that tree like the guy supposedly did in 1971. The '71 photo carries much more weight visually and to this day is still discounted by many.
People need hope...as no real news continues. So this photo gives some just that. Not me.
Yes I see something that looks like white on the wing...but truthfully, it could be anything.
Even a ray of sunshine or an artifact of foliage. Believers have had their share of ridicule over the decades. So much so that the ornithologist who sighted an IBW in 1955, repressed his sighting until just before his death. (can't remember the name).
Wow there was such a strong belief that after 1944, this bird flew
off and died out in a year or 2 that even if someone in the early 50s said they saw a 12 year old bird born in 1944... Sorry, don't let anyone know you THINK you saw the bird, because they'll take you away in a straitjacket, or you
will ruin your reputation anyway.
So you see, now the skeptics are
getting bashed just as believers
were dismissed as unknowledgeable
or worse.
I'm not convinced the bird is extinct nor that it survives.
So I don't think you hate puppies or small children! I wonder about the psychological makeup of believers versus skeptics.
For some of us, reading your blog
makes us feel just as good as reading about how this bird has
been hiding in plain view in Florida.
But reading the Cornell website and
seeing the statement: "These birds have proven themselves to be so wary"... I want to stop seeing that stupid word! These birds have proven to be ghosts that spook us all, believers, skeptics, and agnostics. Keep it comin' Tom, you are a good scientist!
Paul - New Paltz, NY
Be fair..
No one has claimed that that photo is anything other than "intriguing." The best it has been taken as is supporting evidence for his written accounts of visual sightings, not a conclusive photo of anything. And the person who posted that photo along with his own sighting acounts clearly is inexperienced with online publishing journalism . Most lay people still have very little concept of what digital image compression is and what it does to image quality. They just know it makes the files smaller and easier to upload or e-mail.
The poster says he'll let the world know if he gets a real picture, so he obviously does not consider that shot to be definitive either.
Personally the pale areas on the bird's back look to me like an illusion created by a branch in the foreground.
Adobe Photoshop software indicates that the purported white is 86% black, and the black is 95% black! Oh, wait! Forget that analysis! I think I hear the photograph singing, "kent kent" and "tap tap"! Don't you?
Another report of an Ivory Bill today was posted on the Tennessee Bird List, claiming to be the author's "ABA #799."
Though I'm not sure I'm as skeptical as this site's author, I have been growing concerned with the number of reports such as this one that seem to show few signs of evidence. The burden of proof for listing the bird should be quite high, in my opinion.
The number of heard only, sighting with no corroboration and no photograph, etc. reports is not increasing. They are just getting more attention because people are less afraid to talk about them. There have always been scads of them.
The number of heard only, sighting with no corroboration and no photograph, etc. reports is not increasing. They are just getting more attention because people are less afraid to talk about them. There have always been scads of them.
Reports naturally increase with accouncements like last year's, whether the beast exists or not, that is human nature.
No one has claimed that that photo is anything other than "intriguing."
I guess that's what that website owner is claiming, isn't it? I'm not a big fan of these mysterious reports, where someone hints about an Ivory-bill(s) they've seen but won't give any details. Keep the location secret, if you like, but tell us the WHOLE story.
The poster has at least hree stories of his searcing: his enoucnter with the locals describing "dinosaur birds," and two separate Ivorybill sightings. Admittedly he could reveal a lot more detail, but he seems to be holding off until he gets an incontrovertible photograph, I guess. So if we never hear from him again we can guess what that meant.
I also find the teasing withholding of sighting details frusrating and damaging to credibility too, by the way. I agree that they should say either nothing at all, or give full details of their actual sighting even if they omit everything that might give away the location.
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