The segment was roughly seven minutes long and should be available online today here.
A few notes:
1. Jerome Jackson said the Luneau bird is "clearly not an Ivory-bill".
2. Jackson held up one of these "found!" caps and suggested that the exclamation point should be changed to a question mark.
3. I think Jackson did a good job of explaining why, as a Pileated powers straight away from you, you see its flashing white underwings. In my opinion, Fitzpatrick looked rather grim in weakly arguing (without further explanation) that we are actually seeing the upperwings in that situation.
4. The narrator then said "Fitzpatrick backs up his argument with audio evidence", failing to mention that this particular audio evidence was collected a long distance from the site of the Luneau video (maybe 50 miles or more).
5. Russ Charif played an ARU recording of a "mystery bird", noting (as I did here) that the fourth note is different. (He calls it "lower"; I called it "sour").
He then played four known Blue Jay notes, and pointed out that unlike "the mystery bird", these particular four Blue Jay notes were on the same frequency. I think that is a meaningless comparison.
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I think Jackson did a good job of explaining why, as a Pileated powers straight away from you, you see its flashing white underwings. In my opinion, Fitzpatrick looked rather grim in weakly arguing (without further explanation) that we are actually seeing the upperwings in that situation.
I'll wait to see his paper before deciding if he did a good job. Some of us need to see a video of other birds in flight, preferably Pileateds, before we make up our minds -- though I must say, that goes for the other side, too.
Just saying that a bird is going to show it's underwing (or not) only goes so far. I'm not saying that a bird isn't going to show it's underwing at times, but I still have trouble believing that that's all you'd see. For the entire length of the Luneau video, there are no unequivocal frames showing an obvious black upperwing. That seems odd to me. And sorry, I don't believe the stills you have shown from the Pileated video are comparable. The birds in the two videos are flying in two different ways and moving in different directions relative to the camera (the Luneau bird is gaining altitude by evidence of it going higher in the video frame, the Pileated is losing altitude as it drops in the frame).
The wars of words really don't amount to much. Bring on the empirical evidence. Show me video of a bird taking flight directly away from the camera and gaining altitude. I still haven't seen that yet from anyone.
I think if you look carefully at the video, the underwing shows a black trailing edge, and where is the black covert bar, that should be so conspicuous? Eventually, I'm sure it will become generally accepted that the bird in the video is not an Ivory-billed.
I think if you look carefully at the video, the underwing shows a black trailing edge, and where is the black covert bar, that should be so conspicuous?
So you need to look carefully to see the black trailing edge but somehow the black covert bar is supposed to be conspicuous? That's a double standard.
On the video evidence, Tom's assertions about the 3-dimensional "curved" nature of a birds wings in flight as well as the careful "red-dot" analysis of the various wing points is almost airtight. The sour note however does not cause
me to dismiss the Cornell ARU recording.
We can use the Tanner recording to nearly prove an ARU recording is an IBW, but if a sound on an ARU falls a bit outside the Tanner song we can only argue the converse.
When the Tanner recording was 'degraded' by placing it at distance in a deeper woodland, it sounded much more like the ARU.
The song on Tanner's recording is not "kent kent kent" it's more of a
"kit-kent-kit-kent". The Cornell ARU recording follows this pattern
though it does sound a lot less
"tin-hornish" than the 1930's recording. We don't have any evidence that IBWs do not occasionally produce sour notes at the end of a song that may have been interrupted. There just isn't enough song evidence, period.
Sonograms are another thing.
Does distance change sonograms?
And another thing, I'm still waiting for a Blue Jay song either recorded or real life that sounds even remotely like the ARU recording.
In my experience with Northern Blue Jays, their mimicry always sounds rather "sotto voce" to me. Never even approaching the strident: "Jay-Jay". And the ARU recording IMHO sounds too cadenced to be any Blue Jay I've heard. And too strong for a nuthatch.
Paul - New Paltz, NY
"And another thing, I'm still waiting for a Blue Jay song either recorded or real life that sounds even remotely like the ARU recording."
As noted at this link , Cornell has a Blue Jay recording in their own collection that is a good match for the ARU recordings. As far as I know, this recording is not available on the Internet, but you can get a CD from Cornell and hear it for yourself.
Please also note what Russ Charif of Cornell said at this link : "...several observers from our field teams have reported hearing and seeing blue jays making sounds very much like this in this area."
On the video evidence, Tom's assertions about the 3-dimensional "curved" nature of a birds wings in flight as well as the careful "red-dot" analysis of the various wing points is almost airtight. The sour note however does not cause
me to dismiss the Cornell ARU recording.
Paul, it's interesting how we both seem to have roughly the same outlook on the whole situation. It seems we're both skeptical believers or skeptical skeptics or whatever you want to call it, but for very different reasons. One of us finds the video highly dubious, the other finds the ARU not convincing.
Anyway, I'm probably beating a dead horse now, but I have to disagree that the 3-D aspect of wings plus the red dot analysis make for an almost airtight case. As I've already mentioned, the red dot analysis is based on video of a Pileated shot at a different angle and flight style situation than the Luneau video. They may look similar, but the birds really are at different angles relative to the camera.
I'm not denying that birds' wings are 3-dimensional, nor am I saying you wouldn't see the underside of the wings of the Luneau bird. But I still can't see how you would never see its upperwings as it flies up and away from the camera, particularly as it finishes the downstroke but before it begins the upstroke. I really need to see an actual video of how that could happen. I'm not saying that it's necessarily impossible, but I haven't seen sufficient evidence to support it either.
I found Tom's video comparison unconvincing for two reasons:
1. The geometry of camera to bird is entirely different, one is viewed from below, the other at nearly eye level. This would substantially alter the upperwing/underwing viewing.
2. Tom's comparison frames are rotated at inconsistent angles (i.e. no the same angle for every frame) to obtain the red-dot match. To me this means they had to be massaged too much to make the matches.
On double standards, I find it curious that Jackson's list of credible reports over the last 60 years includes ones with less documentation and detail that the Bayou de View sightings (and no multiple observer reports at all, I believe), and also includes several heard-only encounters with no recording at all. At least one of these is by an observer I knew well and who had a reputation for reports of extreme rarities that were difficult to confirm. Yet now that he is presented with multiple sightings and recorded vocalizations, he is suddenly the extreme skeptic. This inconcistency is very troubling to me.
I did the "red dot" analysis, which I don't think is conclusive, just suggestive.
I have pulled out the first 60 frames of the Luneau video--and copied just the detail of the bird to one big graphic file. It is fairly easy to count wingbeats, despite the blurriness. When one does this, it looks to me like one is mostly seeing the underside of the wings on the downstroke--the upstroke is very quick and the wings almost disappear. I think this is because the wings are folded close to the body--typical in powered flight for almost any bird.
I'll send Tom a selection of those frames later in the week if he cares to post it, and people can judge for themselves. Of course, one can see the video on the web. (I have not seen the DVD version.)
I don't claim to be an expert at all.
What I think so much of this debate comes back to is this: "Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Proof." If intelligent, educated, reasonable people can "see" either a Pileated or an IBWO in the video, you simply have to assume that it's PROBABLY a Pileated until PROVEN otherwise. Yes, that's a double standard, and there should be a double standard when it comes to extraordinary claims. If Cornell wants to make the claim that it's an Ivory-bill for sure, it's up to THEM to come up with REAL proof. They've failed, miserably. And since history shows that it isn't all that tough to get REAL proof, the odds of it being true are low and sinking fast.
The same holds for the ARU recordings. Let's compare it the real Elvis. Anyone ever think of how ironic that name is? Both were real living beings. Reports of both poured in after their respective passing. The more reports you get, the more likely to be true it is, right? But faith isn't fact. Reports aren't proof.
"I was in Memphis today, and Elvis is alive because he was singing there!!!!"
"Did you see him?"
"No, I heard him!"
"How do you know it was Elvis?"
"It was almost an exact match to his voice!!!"
"Couldn't it have been an Elvis record?"
"I'm pretty sure it wasn't."
"Couldn't it have been an impersonator?"
"It sounded way too much like him!!!"
On Jackson's "double standard."
There's a very, very big difference in Jackson's claims AND Cornell's claims. Cornell has claimed PROOF of living Ivory-bills, Jackson has not.
Here's what Dr. Jackson has said: The methods of science are clear. Scientific progress is made on the basis of data that are unequivocal to other scientists. Did I see an Ivory-billed Woodpecker along the Noxubee River in Mississippi in 1973? Did I hear an Ivory-billed Woodpecker near Vicksburg in 1987? Were those Ivory-bills I heard and saw in Cuba in 1988? Did David Kulivan see Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in the Pearl River swamp in 1999? Did Ivory-billed Woodpeckers make the loud "bams" heard by searchers there? Did Ivory-bills scale the trees that the team photographed? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
The whole extraordinary claims thing falls down if you happen not to believe that the continued existence of the IBWO is an extraordinary claim. It is not on par with UFOs or Bigfoot or Non-Newtonian gravitation (the sorts of claims that Sagan was referring to when he coined that phrase). Presumably extinct species have been redicovered many times. This is not extraordinary (beyond the realms of ordinary existence) or unprecedented. As has been pointed out MANY MANY MANY times we did NOT go 60+ years with ABSOLUTELY NO evidence of the bird; this is a false claim. We went 60+ years without a photograph that was accepted as not being a fabrication. That is not the same thing at all. This trumpeting if "60 YEARS WITHOUT A TRACE" is the achilles heel of this whole extraordinary claims argument and is starting to sound more liek a political slogan than a scientific premise. THAT is the best example of "groupthink" and "self-fulfilling prophecy" in this whole "debate." There was even physical evidence found in the late 60s and published in the literature; has anyone attempted to revisit that feather? A falsehood repeated frequently and loudly still never becomes truth.
No one is saying "60 Years with no evidence." I think that is an effort to frame the debate that way so it can be shot down.
It's 60 years with no proof. Every single time when a claim could be proven, one way or another, it turned out to NOT be an Ivory-bill.
If, and that's IF, there was an Ivory-bill feather found in the 60s, it could be from many different sources, such as a feather plucked from one of the many museum specimens, a feather that had been in a tree hollow, or even, for that matter, from a living Ivory-bill. That's still 40 years ago!
It's rather ridiculous, in my mind, to claim that Cornell's Ivory-bill paper wasn't an extraordinary claim. It was repeatedly called "miraculous", "the birding story of the century," "stunning," there is an endless list of superlatives. Even if true, any time a creature supposed extinct is found alive, it is an extraordinary event. Extraordinary doesn't mean impossible, it means "beyond what is ordinary." Extraordinary proof means evidence like good photos or film, the kind of proof that was somewhat ordinary in the Tanner/Allen days!
Trying to claim that a basic scientific principle doesn't apply, because Cornell's claim isn't extraordinary? Puh-leeze!
What Carl Sagan meant is the more extraordinary your claim is, the higher the burden of proof. No doubt about it. And the claim that Cornell had proof of living Ivory-Bills was clearly extraordinary. And the evidence is extraordinarily weak as evidenced by the fact that it has to be debated. (No one is debating the coelacanth.) It's not some unprovable theory we're talking about, it's a physical bird!
I will obtain the Cornell Blue-Jay recording. However I have birded with some excellent birders who were absolutely tone-deaf. So hearing that people thought they heard Blue-Jays that sounded like the tape.... I know people who can separate juvenile fall warblers with ease, yet cannot tell the difference between a yellow warbler and a Redstart.
Most of my bird club has hearing aids, 'ya know! :-)
There were reported sightings of the Passenger Pigeon near Toronto after Martha died in the Cincinnati zoo in 1914. But they stopped after about 15 years. Despite the presence of
Mourning Doves that look similar.
(I've seen stuffed Passenger Pigeons in museums that matched paintings
for color).
And the late-50s through 1965 represented a lull in IBW reportings. Why did IBW's continue to be reported though Passenger Pigeon sightings virtually stopped by 1930? Perhaps the beauty of the bird makes people want to see it more than a passenger pigeon... or more likely, that reports of the IBW tend to be self-perpetuating, enlarging the mystique of a bird known to live where we usually don't.
Paul - New Paltz, NY
A discussion like this could go on and on, and ultimately this issue will be dealt with in scientific journals. Anyway, here are a few more points. I'll try to make them as clear as possible.
1) There is no doub't that Jerome Jackson knows more about IBWO identification and ecology than most, if not all, people. If he says its clearly not an IBWO in the video, it would be highly suprising if he was wrong.
2) It's not a "double standard" to say you need to look carefully at the trailing edge, because the video is so poor (otherwise there wouldn't be any dispute), that the precise pattern of this area is not clear. I think in some shots the bird does show a black trailing edge. However, the covert area where there should be a black covert bar is clearly shown and is clearly white. This alone rules out the bird being an IBWO.
3) Most of the authors on the Science paper, including the most experienced, haven't seen an IBWO. Of the brief flight sightings the only feature consistently noted was the white trailing edge. The chances of this relating to an abnormal Pileated, as apparently these have been seen in the area, is far more likely than an IBWO. In not one sighting was the very distinctive bill color noted - its not called Ivory-billed for nothing.
4) The researchers say themselves that they can't rule out other possibilities for the double-knocks/calls.
5) This species was thought by many to be extinct for good reason. No confirmed sightings for decades, whilst this was a bird that had specific habitat requirements and was not capable of adapting to widescale habitat change. Almost exactly the same thing has happened to the Imperial Woodpecker in South America.
6)It therefore seems more likely than a mistake has been made here, than the IBWO has been rediscovered.
7) Whether the Ivory-billed is extinct or not, I'm sure there will be more sightings of it.
Yes, supposedly "extinct" species have been "rediscovered". If that's your proposition with the IBWO, support it with several examples in which the "extinct" species was essentially discovered "in plain sight", for lack of a better description. Good grief, we're talking a well-traversed National Wildlife Refuge here. The place has hunters, it has anglers, it has birders, it has paddlers, and it has wildlife managers - biologists, technicians, enforcement officers, etc., visiting it on a daily/weekly /monthly basis for years. You might as well suggest that you found IBWOs in the Youngstown OH river park.
For that matter, the video is about useless, too. Do you know what's really funny (and paradoxical) about the Patterson Bigfoot movie footage? There are at least two sets of Bigfoot skeptics that just shred that movie - but for mutually exclusive reasons. They posit that two totally different, mutually impossible hoaxes exist. And even better, there are two groups of Bigfoot believers, one of which accepts the movie as legitimate and one that doesn't. The movie has come to mean whatever people want it to mean.
To be quite honest I do believe that the IBWO still exists. The video on ther other hand is of such poor quality that no conclusive proof could/or should be drawn from it.
The audio on the other hand is quite compelling. IMHO it doesn't sound like a Blue Jay. But even that should be discounted because there was no sighting involved for verification.
I think it would have been more prudent for the parties involved to use these pieces of evidence as a starting block for further investigation in the area.They should have witheld their announcement until they had definate proof that the bird exists there.
I believe that the IBWO is probably more wide ranging and nomadic than it was currently thought to be. The bird is very opportunistic and current environmental factors are dictating how it behaves.
We focus on the studies of Dr. Tanner to base our assumptions on how this bird should act but the world today is a much different place. I'm sure this was all discussed already but it is important to keep in mind if this project is to become a success.
No matter the outcome it's all good because an effort is being made and it's going to be beneficial for us and the animals that inhabit these wonderful places.
Scientific debate takes place in the peer-reviewed literature, and at professional conferences where information is presented and discussed face-to-face with other scientists. Until someone submits a paper to these venues that challenges the Arkansas data, there is no scientific debate about it. The only paper that was submitted was withdrawn in the face of additional evidence. The one author of that paper who continues to pursue his objections is not doing so through the primary venues for scientific discourse, and has not submitted a manuscript of his own to any journal.
I repeat: There is no ongoing scientific debate about the Arkansas data in the mainstream scientific venues.
I'm not sure that your last statement is correct. I think that it is likely that a critical paper will be published in the upcoming months.
Why don't you write up your video analysis and submit it?
Regardless, until the paper is actually submitted, accepted, and published, or a presentation is given at a meeting, not a local audubon chapter or on a popular science show, there is not a true debate in the scientific community.
Until someone submits a paper to these venues that challenges the Arkansas data, there is no scientific debate about it.
That's elitist and untrue. Do you believe that Gregor Mendel didn't make any scientific discoveries because he was a monk, not a scientist? Was there no scientific debate before peer reviewed literature existed?
If there is a debate, and both parties are using scientific principles to frame their arguments, it's a scientific debate.
Unless Cornell gets some REAL proof this season, we'll all see plenty of scientific debate, no matter how you define it.
Mendel lived a long time ago. Literature and conferences are where peer-reviewed scientific debate takes place now. This is not elitist. There is nothing at all stopping Tom or anyone else from writing and submitting a rebuttal article (nor would there be a barrier to a rural monk doing likewise now). I am not sure why this has not happened. Non-peer reviewed writings are considered "gray literature" and, for good reason, are not given as much consideration.
Peer review is not infallible. Many things that ultimately prove to have been misguided or just plain wrong get through it. That is why a critical analysis that can convince reviewers that it is logical, well-conceived, and clearly presented (even if they happen not to agree with it) would be welcome. Disagreement is normal in science.
Arguing against the mainstream scientific literature as the primary path for discourse is a tool of pseudoscience.
"....there is not a true debate in the scientific community."
The writer of this has evidently missed articles like this one in Nature (one of the worlds leading scientific journals), where scientists do question the rediscovery:
Ornithology: A wing and a prayer
Rex Dalton
SUMMARY: Sightings of the ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird believed extinct for 50 years, have fired the public's imagination. But is it really alive?
Just because a critical paper hasn't been published yet doesn't mean that there won't be papers published. Remember, it can take months from having a paper accepted to it being published and thats not taking into account the time to write the paper and have it reviewed.
One of the authors, Richard Prum, curator of ornithology at Yale University's Peabody Museum, that withdrew the paper now says the following:
"If they don't find it by this spring, they will have a lot of explaining to do."
"The area is so finite, and the technology ... and the armies of people are so vast ... they will blanket the area to the point where it will be impossible to imagine if the bird is really there that it will elude this array of people."
"no scientific debate" is not the same as "no peer-reviewed scientific debate."
The former was saying that if it isn't published in approved journals it isn't science. That's absurd. Political realities of modern science are another matter, and it's important not to confuse the two issues.
If some layman gets a good video of an Ivory-Bill nest this winter, that will have scientific merit, as will new logical points raised by laymen supporting or refuting the evidence we currently have.
Arguing against the mainstream scientific literature as the primary path for discourse is a tool of pseudoscience.
As is basing a belief on faith, fuzzy photos and unrepeatable science.
Just for kicks, does anyone know who "peer reviewed" the original Science paper?
Are the identities of peer reviewers typically disclosed?
Identities of the reviewers of papers in peer reviewed journals are not disclosed. Science would probably have chosen 2-3 academic ornithologists. The authors of the paper may know the reviewers identities - it depends if they signed their name or not when they returned the review.
Whats interesting about this, is that if you had found a major rarity in your area, say a first for the USA, the number of people who would assess your record would be far more and the process would take much longer.
Approving a paper for publication and approving a sighting for a State list are two very different processes. Reviewers need not agree with all the conclusions in the paper, just agree that they are clearly presented, the reasoning is sound, and the research is new, original, and significant. Published records are sometimes declined by records committees for a variety of reasons, such as uncertainty about identification or wild origins of the bird. The criteria for acceptance of a manuscript versus a rare bird record are different. In this case, however, at least one of the Big Woods reports was also accepted by the Arkansas records committee.
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