Yesterday, she wrote:
Too bad I didn't get THE picture I so badly want someone to take. But I'm feeling more and more confident that this year someone will get the documentation that will please all but the True Believer Skeptics. Bobby [Harrison] has seen an Ivory-bill FIVE times now. I sure hope he's the one who gets the perfect photo. He's a very nice guy, generous with his knowledge and kind and friendly--he deserves it!
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Harrison should show us the mystery video of his "Ivory-Bill." It's just part of the secrecy behind this whole search that is so damaging. The video is announced, yet never shown. Despite many questions as to WHY it has never been shown to the public, I have yet to hear one word of explanation.
When Harrison looks at his mystery video, he sees an obvious Ivory-Bill. Apparently even Cornell doesn't agree or they would have released it.
Also, to quote "The Grail Bird," Bobby had had a lot of sightings, and people [the Cornell team] were starting to doubt him. I had more faith in him, though
Less faith, more evidence.
Show us an Ivory-Bill.
Yes, at least the guy in Florida who said he has had several sightings, says they are loud and fairly approachable. He's got his facts right at any rate.
I guess it may seem like skepticism is causing damage, so damage control is needed. Yet if they think they saw the bird, they think it's out there so they aren't particularly concerned about damage-control unless it gets into March and no evidence.
I mean if you were sure of what you saw... right or not, you are fat and
happy unless the leaves are coming
out and there's still no bird.
Paul Sutera - New Paltz, NY
They must be worried even if they ARE sure, and I have to think that there's got to be some team members starting to wonder if it has all been a mistake, don't you think?
And if the recent past is any indication, I think the chances of them releasing any verifiable evidence is close to zero. A few glimpses, though, I'm betting.
I have talked directly with someone that has seen Harrison's video and talked with him about it afterward. They disagreed about what they were seeing. Still no smoking gun.
I think it is wonderful that skilled persons believe they are seeing an ivory-billed woodpecker. It provides hope that definitive proof will ultimately be forthcoming. Of course, if there is only one bird present, that would in and of itself be a cause of conservation concern because one bird cannot sustain a population, and if this happened to be THE LAST bird of the species, it would prove to be tragic. But if there is a live ivory-bill under periodic observation, then one day there may be a roost found, a mate detected, a nest located, a molted feather picked up, a high quality photo or video taken, and that will solve the ongoing mystery.
I don't believe that healthy skepticism requires ill will or desire for failure. Jerome Jackson spoke of hope and until we have definitive science, I like to
believe that hope is appropriate and desirable. The trick is to avoid mixing hope (or faith) with good science.
Stan Moore San Geronimo, CA hawkman11@hotmail.com
(a) The Harrison video has been mentioned multiple times by Cornell and is always dismissed as being very brief, very poor, and barely even revealing the presence of a bird much less an Ivorybill. It has been shown publicly, and the audience has generally concurred with that opinion (as I believe Mr. Harrison does himself).
(b) Why do people assume they know what Cornell have and have not found this season? The PR from their teem has been very inconsistent both as regards what they would release and what they might have already found. And even if we did know results so far (which is impossible), it's only January, for Pete's sake. Full leafout is still nearly 3 months away. Most of the 2004-2005 encounters happened in February-April, didn't they? Some of you seem far to anxious to close the book on this whole process. Scientific consensus generally takes years or decades to form and change, not weeks or months. And it also requires spending grant money on endeavours that may ultimately bear no fruit.
The Harrison video has been mentioned multiple times by Cornell and is always dismissed as being very brief, very poor, and barely even revealing the presence of a bird much less an Ivorybill. It has been shown publicly, and the audience has generally concurred with that opinion (as I believe Mr. Harrison does himself).
Just about everyone who has seen it doesn't know what bird it shows. That is, except for Bobby Harrison. To him, it's definitely an Ivory-Bill:
Although it is brief and of poor quality, it shows an ivory-bill flying past a decoy that I had placed on a tupelo tree to attract a living counterpart. The bird is seen flying away from the camera at an angle of about forty-five degrees. Although the bird is behind foliage throughout most of the video, it is visible in an opening just before it passes out of the frame. Frame-by-frame images bring out the wing pattern of an ivory-billed woodpecker.
During the flyby, which lasts just a quarter second, the wings flap three and a half times, or roughly fourteen beats a second. In real time the wing beat appears to have a shallow range of movement, but the actual stroke is deep, covering an angle of at least 120 degrees. A frequency of fourteen wing beats a second explains why the wing movements I have seen appear rapid and shallow when the bird is in powered flight, and the high frequency also accounts for the description in the historical literature of the ivory-bill's pintail-like flight. Fourteen beats a second is too fast for the eye to see, so fast that the wings appear to quiver instead of flap. The movement creates the illusion of a shallow range of movement during powered flight. The video also shows a second flyby[My bold font.], thirty-three seconds after the first one, suggesting that the ivorybill was responding to the decoy.
To me, this explains Mr. Harrison's ability to see more living Ivory-Bills than anyone else on the planet. It looks like he gets two sightings in his video, where other people see zero.
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