All day I was aware that this was a forest where an Ivory-billed Woodpecker may have spent some time. It's sad to me how much development and agriculture there is along the White River--there is a lot of "contiguous habitat," but wilderness this is not, by any stretch of the imagination. I can hear cars and airplanes from our campsite, to say nothing of gunfire, and there is a disturbing amount of trash--from beer and pop cans to toilet paper--in the woods. If the Ivory-billed Woodpecker depended on genuinely untrammeled wild habitat, we didn't leave it much at all. For that matter, we didn't leave much for those of US who depend on genuinely untrammeled wild habitat. This is a splendid place--but the Ivory-bill, and all these innocent little birds who don't even know about bird feeders, deserve ever so much better.In my humble opinion, Laura seems to be working a bit too hard to convince herself that Arkansas Pileateds are extremely hard to photograph. Note that in the past, she's taken some pretty good Pileated photos in Minnesota.
(If you think my gentle needling is a bit "mean", please rest assured that Laura has directed her share of barbs at me in the past. It's all in good fun, right?)
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More from Laura Erickson via Michael McDowell's "Mike's Birding and Digiscoping Blog". http://www.birddigiscoping.com/2006/01/more-ivory-billed-woodpeckers.html
(hopefully the link didn't break). His blog entry has a reference to another of Laura's own entries. Michael's entry makes an astute observation - Laura made a round-about reference in her own blog to a rumor that there were more IBWO sightings this season. Michael then points out that SIX minutes after the original entry, Laura amended the original entry to drop the reference to any knowledge - first hand or not - of sightings this season. Merely a quick change after a moment's reconsideration of what she'd written? Or did someone more intimately involved with the IBWO project AND who coincidentally subscribed to her feed manage to promptly pick up on the comment? I'm with Laura to an extent, regardless. It's "fish or cut bait" time. Either they've started to collect conclusive documentation, or what they're getting is less than unequivocal and they're trying to figure out how to couch it, or (worst case) they've gotten bupkis. Keep in mind that the release of "less than equivocal" documentation will be grist to the skeptics' mill. The argument by Cornell, et.al., that nothing can be released for fear of triggering a birder stampede doesn't necessarily hold water? Are there birders there already? Yes. Would more show up if Cornell announced they were getting positive results? Yes. But would it endanger the IBWO? No, because photographs or video could be disseminated to the public without disclosing the location at which it was documented. It will be time for Cornell to "show its cards" very soon.
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