Again I say, while some good but hardly professional birders can separate confusing fall warblers at quick glance and be correct, all of the sightings by good birders and even ornithologists - mostly last year, were all incorrect or that as initial certitude began to fall away, groupthink took over. "She thinks she saw one, so my sighting must have been real too." Like a bunch of sticks arranged in a teepee that support only each other but would fall down without all the "cross-support". Then add the piebald-Pileated - the dangerous flying specter of deception, and the potential overtones of "oops, cover-this-up"... you create a perfect case of skepticism. While the skills exist in the human brain to easily distinguish the two birds, even with a small piece of the bird showing, add groupthink and everyone apparently loses it. I'm half-persuaded by this argument. I can go out into the parking lot and see only the left corner of my cars roof, buried behind mammoth SUVs... and I know in a glance it's my car. The brain has these discernment skills. It also however has the fill-in-the-blank skills. I see a piece of my roofline and brain assumes the rest is the same. Even makes a mental picture. I see a white trailing edge from a few white feathers and my brain doesn't need the rest. It creates a mental image where the whole trailing edge is white. That's another cornerstone of the skeptics' argument. On the other side of the coin, you have the wide-ranging young male far from the home range, who doesn't talk on the wing (Tanner did say they only occasionally vocalize on the wing), apparently flies away when humans get near and represents the outlier of a tiny relict population. To me, I'm not happy with either explanation. It's amazing how a bird that might not even be alive can do so much to arouse human emotion. And an explosion of web posts!
Good question... well I won't defend myself... I've found that's really an attack in reverse anyway.
There is some innuendo, sure. But also good science and a history of nesting failures prior to their disappearance. A nesting pair only needed to raise 3 nestlings in a lifetime to keep the species from declining, yet they declined. It seems fantastic to believe the bird is in the Cache but just is so jittery! I kinda think the bird exists but not in AK. I believe in the "unvisited by birders swamp theory." I'm just a little nervous about Elvis himself. I do have 5 weeks of vacation coming. But I'm waiting for the IBWO tour bus to pick me up. :-).
5 comments:
More of the same, repeating the same criticisms, that have already been answered, nothing new.
And nothing is on the other side either.
Again I say, while some good but hardly professional birders can separate confusing fall warblers at quick glance and be correct, all of the sightings by good birders and even
ornithologists - mostly last year, were all incorrect or that as initial certitude began to fall away, groupthink took over. "She thinks she saw one, so my sighting must have been real too." Like a bunch of sticks arranged in a teepee that support only each other but
would fall down without all the "cross-support". Then add the
piebald-Pileated - the dangerous flying specter of deception, and
the potential overtones of "oops, cover-this-up"... you create a perfect case of skepticism.
While the skills exist in the
human brain to easily distinguish
the two birds, even with a small
piece of the bird showing, add
groupthink and everyone apparently
loses it. I'm half-persuaded by
this argument.
I can go out into the parking lot
and see only the left corner of
my cars roof, buried behind mammoth
SUVs... and I know in a glance it's my car. The brain has these
discernment skills. It also however has the fill-in-the-blank skills.
I see a piece of my roofline and brain assumes the rest is the same. Even makes a mental picture.
I see a white trailing edge from
a few white feathers and my
brain doesn't need the rest.
It creates a mental image where
the whole trailing edge is white.
That's another cornerstone of
the skeptics' argument.
On the other side of the coin,
you have the wide-ranging young male
far from the home range, who doesn't talk on the wing (Tanner did say they only occasionally vocalize on the wing), apparently flies away when humans get near and represents the outlier of a tiny relict population. To me, I'm not happy
with either explanation.
It's amazing how a bird that might not even be alive can do so much
to arouse human emotion. And an
explosion of web posts!
Paul Sutera, New Paltz, NY
"To me, I'm not happy
with either explanation."
You are as strongly swayed by innuendo and supposition as you are by direct testimony?
Good question... well I won't defend myself... I've found that's really an attack in reverse anyway.
There is some innuendo, sure.
But also good science and a history
of nesting failures prior to their
disappearance. A nesting pair
only needed to raise 3 nestlings
in a lifetime to keep the species
from declining, yet they declined.
It seems fantastic to believe the bird is in the Cache but
just is so jittery! I kinda think the bird exists but not in AK. I believe in the "unvisited by birders swamp theory." I'm just a little nervous about Elvis himself. I do have 5 weeks of vacation coming. But I'm waiting for the IBWO tour bus to pick me up. :-).
Paul Sutera, New Paltz, NY
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