Here is a paragraph from Fitzpatrick (the bold font is mine):
Finding a bird as rare as an ivory-billed woodpecker is a tough job for a number of reasons, even with the concerted planning and effort we have been carrying out. (1) We are searching for a bird that as far back as the 1890s was famous for being wary and difficult to locate. (2) The area we are searching includes 550,000 acres of forest, and the bird or birds could be anywhere within it. (3) If the bird that was originally seen was a dispersing, unpaired male, it could be hundreds of miles away by now. Even if it has a permanent home range, it could use 10-20 square miles of this type of forest (ivory-bills may travel 10 to 20 kilometers per day in search of food). (4) In these swamp forests, searchers are limited to going where they can by canoe or must walk slowly and laboriously, sometimes through hip-deep water or thick mud that sucks at their boots and makes every step a struggle. (5) Even if searchers happen to get within range of an ivory-bill, there is no guarantee that they will see it. The trees are dense, making it difficult to see birds even 50 yards away. Ivory-bills are notoriously elusive. Several sightings so far have been glimpses of this magnificent bird as it travels in rapid flight above the treeline, appearing and disappearing so quickly that the viewer is lucky to get binoculars on it, much less a steady shot with a camera.
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5 comments:
Gee, didn't Stalin say something along the lines of, "if you repeat a lie enough, then people will accept it for the truth"? Symptomatic of the slow process in which the IBWO searchers have deluded themselves away from facts and observations to believing in whatever assertions are necessary to make IBWOs a plausibility.
Three years ago, most of these guys accepted the Tanner/Jackson "party line". Now, they propagate the exact opposite because the reports of Tanner & the others will not support continued faith in the existence of IBWOs.
We might have once reasoned, "A, B & C have been observed of IBWOs in the past; therefore, we can infer that D might be valid in searching for them." The faithful now make all assertions based on the fundamental idea that "Ivory-billeds MUST exist; therefore, if we can't find them, then they must be elusive, they must have large home ranges, they must be quiet, they must be transient" etc.
Acceptance of the Fitzpatrick premises means that you must substitute the assumptions of "faith-based" observers - whom, in two years, have never individually seen the alleged IBWO(s) more than once (I don't recall) - for a pretty solid body of contemporaneously recorded observations by experienced watchers who repeatedly saw numbers of birds over long periods of time. These were watchers, too, who had no vested interest in conflating sightings in order to justify a continued search, either.
Or, as the "Mythbusters" like to say, "I utterly reject your reality and replace it with my own!"
They've actually backed themselves in a corner here. Maybe they do have more evidence. If they won't write about it or discuss it in a forum where the claims can be critically examined - if "the public can't be trusted" - then for all intents and purposes, it doesn't exist.
I'd lost interest in this thing. Argument is a waste of time when it's about evidence that can't be examined. Now, it's sort of like driving very slowly past a bad car accident on the freeway. You know it's ugly, you know you should feel bad for watching. Seeing these folks throw away their integrity here on a Quixotic errand is just so sick & twisted that you can't help but look.
What he said.
I'm hoping this wary talk has a lot to do with explaining to totally green neophytes that they aren't quite as easy to see as Robins or Flickers or the birds they commonly see.
Still it doesn't do science a great service.
Pileated woodpeckers are fairly wary
but they'll hang out too and be easily seen. Big bird, strong
binoculars.
Now mobile...yes they probably have to move around more to find their
quarry... recently dead trees with
larvae than a pileated... which
only needs rotten wood of any age.
It's this habit of sometimes taking off and flying away, that allowed
them to stretch this into wariness.
I've never heard this word wary used so many times!
Paul Sutera, New Paltz, NY
The claimed "wariness" of this bird is their only hope for its survival and the reason why they can't get any good photos etc. The historical evidence suggests that it wasn't that wary. Bad news for the so called rediscovery. I fear the bird is long gone....that sucks.
They should do the right thing and withdraw the Science paper, rather than giving excuses.
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