FIRST there is simply the long history of repeated sightings of this bird over five decades, time and time and time again in various locales, no not confirmed, but repeated sightings by credible observers, probabilistically, MEAN SOMETHING!!...When NO credible sightings/claims have occurred for 75 successive years THEN come talk to me about the likelihood of extinction...Here are some similar arguments:
There were 40-some sightings last year," said Rickie Roberts..."There were 22 sightings in one day. ... There's even one guy who swears there's a family ... who live behind his house."...Roberts' wife, Beverly, said too many credible people have seen [it] for her not to believe it exists. "I've got family members who firmly believe they've seen it," she said..."Whatever it is, there is something." Tracy Nichols and Sue Page, who work at City Hall, said they have heard scores of ... [related] tales over the years.The arguments in the paragraph above were actually used to support the theory that a "legendary Bigfoot look-alike" called the "Fouke monster" exists in Arkansas. No one seems able to get a clear photograph of the Fouke monster.
When I mention Bigfoot, a typical response is "well, Bigfoot never existed, and we know the Ivory-bill did exist".
First of all, I'm not sure why that distinction matters much, since we are still comparing two high-profile U.S. "species" that may not exist today. Second of all, it's been argued by some (not me) that Bigfoot could a living descendant of something called Gigantopithecus.
I don't think we have a serious shortage of Bigfoot believers. If you're interested, please check out the websites for recent Bigfoot conferences in Texas and Pennsylvania. (Note that the Texas conference website says they had "official attendance of over 500 for both days").
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Well true, though the word credible is a slightly slippery slope. You can discredit it by pointing out anecdotal cases that are pretty comical. It seems people are seeing IBWs on their bird feeders every day now.
But you cannot discredit all the sightings by pointing out the most absurd ones.
However there hasn't been a whisper about the Passenger Pigeon since about 1930. Despite their
similarity to a Mourning Dove.
That doesn't prove anything, I know, but it is interesting. The eskimo curlew sightings in the late '80s were sight records that are more generally accepted. Yet it's nearly impossible to tell that bird from it's look-alike species. (name escapes me).
Of course that bird is far less glamorous and hasn't attracted the circus of activity this one has.
(and it breeds in a really cold remote place, of course).
Nobody started a forum skeptical of the Eskimo Curlew sight records.
Maybe they should, their distinguishing markings (color) can be altered by a red sunset or
bad lighting. As for Cornell rushing out their latest evidence... we shouldn't assume that they bump their timetables because we think skepticism has them on the run!
Paul - New Paltz, NY.
You are right, you cannot discredit all the reports because some are clearly false. On the other hand, numerous, seemingly credible reports "do not a fact make."
If there are in fact no living Ivory-Bills, it's obvious why they are being reported when the Passenger Pigeon, for example, isn't. It's the mystique of the bird. It't the same reason people keep seeing Elvis and not Perry Como.
Nevertheless, eyewitnesses continued to come forward with accounts of their sightings -- more than 4,000 of them, according to Witchell's estimate. Most of the witnesses described a large creature with one or more humps protruding above the surface like the hull of an upturned boat. Others reported seeing a long neck or flippers. What was most remarkable, however, was that many of the eyewitnesses were sober, level-headed people: lawyers and priests, scientists and school teachers, policemen and fishermen -- even a Nobel Prize winner...one photo stood above the rest. Taken in 1934, it shows what appears to be the slender neck of an animal rising from the surface of the water. From the moment it was published in the London Daily Mail, it became the very image of the Loch Ness Monster and, for many, the strongest evidence that Nessie actually exists.
One reason the photograph had such an impact on the Loch Ness legend was that it came from such a credible source. The photo was sold to the Daily Mail by a London physician named R. Kenneth Wilson, who said he had taken the picture when he noticed a commotion in the water as he was driving up from London to photograph birds with a friend near Inverness. Few believed that such a respected doctor could be party to a deception.
Unfortunately, the creature in the photo was too distant and fuzzy for experts to agree on what it was. Clearly, though, there HAS to be some giant sea serpent in the lake.
I won't deny there are similarities between Ivorybills and Bigfoot, however, I'm not aware of respected mammalogists making reports on Bigfoot . With the Ivorybill, you had Cruickshank and Terres reporting them from Florida in the 50s, Dennis reporting them in Texas in the 60s, and Jackson and Fred Sibley believing they heard them in Mississippi in the late 80s. (Seeing how some of these reports are received, particularly what happened to Dennis's career after his reports, I'd say it's not terribly surprising that there wasn't any reports involving high-profile ornithologists in the 90s.)
Since Jackson brought up the idea that the probabilities of all being wrong seems too small to be believable (p. 242 of In Search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker) and you obviously disagree with it, why do still trumpet his "endorsement" of this blog? Even though he may agree with your position that the bird in the video is a Pileated, he's still obviously a nutty believer.
On page 242 of his book, Jackson didn't exactly say "...too small to be believable". He asks "Is it likely that all of these reports are misidentifications?" and leaves the question unanswered. Personally, I think that some reports in the years immediately following 1944 may have been accurate.
Tom
(By the way, I don't actually own a trumpet, and moreover, I have very little musical training.)
I saw Perry Como just the other day.
Well people may believe that the "death" of the IBW was highly exaggerated or that it was too
convenient to state that the Singer Tract was the last stand.
Or they're were too many somewhat credible sightings, and none for the Passenger Pigeon after 1930.
Or that people understood and believed that the Passenger Pigeon required large flocks to migrate and breed.
They believed the theories behind the PP extinction and had no evidence to the contrary (however strong/weak).
If Perry Como had "died" in the 40s or 50s suddenly, maybe people would have suspected he was still alive.
But we're talking tabloids here, not scientists.
The fact is, nobody found an aberrant mourning dove and said it was a Passenger Pigeon or a PP-hybrid. And when people said they found 2 Eskimo Curlews in the late 1980s, despite an absence of over 50 years, there was no great
kerfuffle about it.
I'm studying the bird but also the humans here.
Paul - New Paltz, NY
The subject of the aberrant Pileated(s) keep coming up, but why have there been no reports of these birds since Cornell's announcement?
It would be great if Cornell would release their photos, but barring that, what documentation is there that this/these aberrant Pileateds even come close to have white secondaries like an Ivorybill? Birdchick mentions on her blog that the photo she saw shows a bird with only a few white feathers. I think Rosenberg said something similar at the AOU meeting.
If there really is a "population" or even several aberrant Pileateds with huge white patches on the secondaries, why aren't there photos of them or regular reports of "white-winged" woodpeckers coming from Bayou Deview? Surely, they can't be all that difficult to photograph, as has been mentioned many times here. There are outsiders going into these areas now. It isn't just Cornell staff who have reasons to supress such information.
I'm studying the bird but also the humans here.
When all is said and done, I think that's what people will study most about Cornell's Paper and the reacion to it.
Evidence of the aberrant Pileateds? Cornell should have the best information here. The trouble is, they don't seem to want to talk about it. Why not? If there's one bird with two white feathers, just come out and say so for pete's sake! I don't think that's the case, though.
I would guess there's a similar chance of seeing an individual Ivory-bill as there would be to see an individual aberrant Pileated. They do have one or more photos of aberrant Pileated(s) in the area, they don't have any photos of Ivory-bills. Doesn't that seem odd?
There is, of course, this account of a Pileated Ivory-Bill look alike: http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2005/09/noel-snyder-on-potential-ivory-bill.html
Remember, this was written before the current debate.
Another important point is that an aberrant Pileated wouldn't need secondaries exactly like an Ivory-bill. The mere suggestion can cause the human mind to "fill in the blanks" of what they expect to see, especially in a quick look. That's why bushes have been mistaken for bears thousands of times in the U.S., why black labs have been mistaken for bears, why bears have been mistaken for Bigfoot(s)(eet) or even why perfectly normal Pileateds have been mistaken for Ivory-bills hundreds of times.
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