Bird to watch for. Early in 2005, a blurry video and new sightings of the ivory-billed woodpecker, considered extinct for the past 60 years, wowed conservationists and birders alike. Some skeptics remained unconvinced by the 1.2-second footage, but many later were swayed by audio tapes of the woodpecker's call and distinctive "tap, tap." Biologists are scouring the Arkansas bayou, where there have now been more than a dozen sightings, for more evidence that they are not seeing a ghost of a bird past. We're betting this "ghost" proves to be the real thing.I wouldn't say that "many" of the skeptics were swayed by the audio. I know of only two that professed to be swayed (Prum and Robbins), and even those two seem to be back in the skeptic camp now.
At the Science link far above, this caption is next to a frame from the Luneau video:
Now you see it? A fleeting glimpse captured on video raised hopes that the ivory-billed woodpecker might not be extinct after all.
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Ah comment moderation, I see... So we shouldn't expect to see any more dissenting voices here, eh?
Dissenting voices are welcome.
However, please don't expect to use this blog to advertise male enhancement products, engage in off-topic political rants, spout ridiculous ad-hominem attacks, etc etc.
Don't forget BIRDFORUM has removed Tom's posts and will not let him back in. I, for one, will not post there until that policy is reversed. You cannot and should not remove people just for having an unpopular opinion.
Quite a large number of Tom's birdforum posts are still posted and there for all to read; his viewpoint and arguments are still quite well represented in the discussion archives. And individuals were banned from that discussion who were arguing from both sides of this imaginary "fence," not just Tom. It is a misrepresentation to suggest that "skeptical" voices have been singled out for wholesale censorship on birdforum.
That's baloney, plain and simple.
It is crystal clear to many readers of BirdForum that the moderator(s) did indeed "take sides" on this issue, as documented here .
I also think it's a little ironic that I'm letting you defend BirdForum's censorship here. I know of several people who have attempted to post polite criticisms of the censorship on BirdForum; all of those posts have been summarily deleted.
Tom
P.S. Sorry, I'm not giving BirdForum any points for deleting just a lot of my posts, rather than all of them.
Observations from an old-fashioned academic:
When one submits a paper for peer review, the reviews one gets can typically be divided into three groups: (A) those who think you are wonderful and everything you said is thrilling, (B) those who think you are an idiot and everything you said is nonesense, and (C) those who think neither of the above but comment on the strengths and weaknesses of what you actually presented. Virtually any manuscript will illicit all three classes of response from different reviewers.
When preseted with this, it is sorely tempting to just wave the "A" reviews in the faces of the "B" reviewers and say "so there!" But, in fact, it is generally understood that one should throw both the "A" and "B" reviews in the garbage and focus on the "C" reviews. It is there that true dialog, debate, and progress in understanding are made. Neither your compadres nor your enemies have much useful to say to you. There will always be some who think you are a genius and some who think you are a fool. It is the less passionate, but not less interested or informed or insightful, middle voices that deserve attention.
When people focus on the "A" vs. "B" commentary, the "C" voices tend to lose interest and go off to pursue other avenues. I believe this is what has happened in this debate here and on most of the other online forums. And I should note that in cases like this, both "factions" will tend to assume that I am talking about "the other side."
Let us all go out and collect more data about the infinite wonder and mystery of the natural world, so we will have more information at our fingertips in our quest to understand it, shall we? Binoculars and cameras and good walking shoes will give us far better understanding than will keyboards .
"Let us all go out and collect more data..."
I would argue that people have been working very hard to collect Ivory-bill data for over 60 years without a single confirmed sighting, and it's very unlikely that the next 60 years of searching will be any more fruitful.
I would further argue that a half-day spent reading Tanner's book will almost certainly provide more insight into Ivory-bill behavior than a lifetime of unsuccessful searching.
I was not refering only to searching for ivory-billed woodpeckers, but in general for the need to be out documenting what is actually present and occuring, not merely discussing what we think is possible or impossible. Simply because something is inexplicable does not deny its reality if it actually does occur. Whether the previous six decades of ivorybill searching have been entirely without results is also a matter of debate, the points of which have been well covered (indeed, beaten into the ground) and need not be reitterated here. You and Dr. Jackson, whom you cite as a supporter of this forum, would disagree strongly on that point I am quite certain. And this is good: you need not agree on everything to agree on some things.
But what I would argue for is more people, more birders in particular, always seeking out the unknown, the unexpected, the disbelieved. What you find may not be what you were looking for; indeed it probably will not be. As recently as the 1970s, an entirely unknown and undescribed species of warbler** was discovered happily living within the United States just a few miles from a major city. It had been utterly overlooked even though it was not even especially rare within its limited habitat. I have had the pleasure of seeing it myself; indeed five of them in one day. It was quite distinctive in life, though incospicuous in death as it was superficially similar to another widespread species. It had been missed simply because few experienced individuals ventured into its muddy, shrub-entangled habitat. So many birders seem to be content with merely following other people's discoveries; there is a need for more to be out there making the discoveries themselves, and not just at the local sewage treatment lagoon. Even the things we know are all subject to change; biology is anything but static.
**Elfin Woods Warbler, resident in cloud forests of Puerto Rico, within sight of San Juan; overlooked in specimin collections because of its superficial smilarity to the Black-and-White Warbler, but ultimately not even classed in the same genus.
It all comes down to the isolated swamp forest theory. That somewhere a big enough swamp or 2 exists that no birder ever traversed and that it could maintain a healthy breeding (and not interbreeding)population of IBWs. And that there is occasional wandering by young males into suboptimal habitat. Let's remember that for thousands of years these birds never had to wander. Mature dying trees were not hard to find. Of course in 1944, there was no place left for them to go, or so the story goes.
Singer and adjoining areas were the very last swamp forest in the 1940s, the forest was removed, the
birds died out probably by the 1950s. In fact when the forest was cut down, the birds vanished.
This big noisy flashy bird could not be missed if it were alive.
Each pair needed 6 square miles.
To support 10 pairs you need about
60 square miles unless Tanner was a little bit cautious. That's about 8 miles by 8 miles. Did 2 of these swamps exist that no birder traversed for 61 years?
And when they made a sighting,
even though this is a sedentary
species, herds of searchers couldn't find them in 1968, in 2000, or now? (1968, John V Dennis sighting, Big Thicket, Texas). Where were these swamps in the 1950s, the 1960s, etc?
Of course they found a large mammal in the deep forests of Vietnam that was presumed extinct for many years and is now being managed. How about here? Anyone knowledgeable about southern swamp forests. Are they all now bounded by interstates with boat ramps nearby? The impenetrable swamp forest theory is the lynchpin behind the optimism of the believer, whether they know it or not. Maybe it's not willowispis? Maybe we should call it Campephilis SwampThing. Maybe we were lucky that one wandered off and left this mystical place, for us to find it
wandering the Cache River area.
And we may never find the real brood, hiding out in swamp forest so thick you can't see 3 feet
in front of you.
And that forest has to be at least
60 square miles large and never dry enough to explore, and non-navigable by canoe or boat.
Right now I keep coming up on the skeptical side. Geographers anywhere can find me this forest?
Or is it there and always has been there, as big as Rhode Island?
All the way back to 1944? Was it there then? This bird didn't survive without out it, IMHO.
Paul, New Paltz, NY
(Raising hand as birder and biologist knowledgeable about swamp forests)
Yes, there were always bottomland forest remnants. There was never a time when all the forests were simultaneously logged. Forests of 60 mi2? Yes, there are, and were at the lowest times. Need I point out that this is only a 20 mile stretch of river wih a 3 mile wide floodplain? In an area with hundreds of rivers? Plus non-riparian swamp areas and flatwoods? Logging was not synchronized region-wide. Movement between forest remnants? Sedentery species are driven to roam by deforestation quite often; this is being observed in the tropics and the US/Mexican border regularly. Logging was also not necessarily clearcut logging. "Cull trees" remained in abundance in many areas and provide the relict monsters seen now in many bottomlands. These were the ones with splits, crooks, damage, hollows, etc. than rendered them unsuitable for saw timber. The Big Woods area has a superabundance of them. The "no birder ever traversed them" thing is a straw man. No birder traversing a forest is going to see and document every bird present in a 60mi2 area. That is absurd. I think you DRASTICALLY overestimate the density of birders in the rural south, by several orders of magnitude. Many southern counties have STILL hardly been visited at all unless they have a BBS route or some of the widely scattered and often undersampled BBA blocks of the region in them. Most southern states if they did a BBA at all sampled only 1/6 or even 1/12 blocks, and each of these was very lucky to get 10 total observer hours in it. And even this level of effort revealed enormous gaps in the knowledge of the distributions of coastal plain birds, even common and relatively detectable ones such as wood warblers and sparrows... AND woodpeckers.
Eevry southern State has areas in it that meet the criteria you lay out. Very few of them get birder visits on anything but the most occasional basis, and these nearly always from roadsides in passing or at a few well-developed access points.
Perhaps you don't appreciate just how VAST the South is?
Ok, these are the things we need to hear and see. But I still wonder if there is truth to the IBW colony theory. As in, if you found one, in most cases, more are nearby. I've visited the Adirondacks, the Wilsons Warbler is pretty rare there, it's the largest wilderness in the Northeast, except for the woods of Maine. Yet people see these birds enough to report on them.
Of course they sing quite a bit
in open weedy boggy areas!
I'm not going for any point of
view... in fact you can bounce me
back and forth from skeptic to believer and back again.
I enjoyed the picture of the South
you drew for me,
and hearing about it from my
perch here in the Shawangunk Mtns.
(near the Catskills). Thank You!
Paul, New Paltz, NY
Is it theoretically possible for the Ivory-bill to have survived? Absolutely, no one is denying it.
Should we worry about habitat if the Ivory-bill doesn't exist? Of course! It's just like global warming: we don't have to prove it to believe that reducing pollution is a good thing.
Can solid proof like Tanner, Allen and the like produced repeatedly be gotten again if the bird survives? Absolutely no doubt about it. Should we have gotten similar solid proof sometime in the last 60 years? The odds are very, very high that it should have happened.
"Extraordinary claims, extraordinary proof." I am baffled how anyone who considers themselves a scientific thinker can believe that the reported return of a bird "gone for 60 years" is not extraordinary, or that the proof provide thus far is extraordinarily good.
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