It's a small world

I think this post on ID-Frontiers is notable because the author is Ned Brinkley, at some point a part-time member of the Cornell search team:

...For me, the matter is one for the future: clear, unimpeachable evidence of the persistence of this bird has not yet been obtained (or released), and so we, all, wait for something satisfactory. When that evidence is obtained, if it ever is, I doubt that there will be much need for debate about a few pixels...I have found it difficult to force my own mind in the past 12 months to stay 'open', as it were, to the possibility that the sight records indicate the presence of Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas. I have maintained the openness as a sort of policy chiefly because I know and have birded with several people who have reported the species, Tim Gallagher in particular...

Ned Brinkley is editor of North American Birds, a publication that last year published a lengthy special section on the Ivory-bill "rediscovery". It's interesting to see him listed along with Gallagher, John Fitzpatrick and Ken Rosenberg on this page of past Cornell World Series of Birding teams.

On that same thread, Matt Sharp weighs in this way:

I think the proper tense is "could have been useful" had the same experts who wrote the Science piece been listened to when many of them addressed Fitzpatrick directly. At this point the time and money have been spent I just hope that less questionable evidence is presented and that there is actually at least 1 bird found after the current field season. Otherwise Cornell will have gone further than anyone in actually proving the species is extinct.

In the special "North American Birds" issue mentioned above, a "Matthew Sharp" is listed as Photo Editor, and is also listed as a co-author (with Ned Brinkley) of an "Editor's Notebook" piece on the Ivory-bill.

As a side note, a Google search for "Ned Brinkley" also found this April 30, 2005 email from Van Remsen:

A forthcoming issue of North American Birds, with Ned Brinkley leading the way, will focus on birder responsibilities...As for your chances, keep in mind that something like 100,000 hrs of field time by skilled field people has yielded a grant total of probably less than a minute of cumulative observation time, and that only a handful of those people ever got a glimpse...I am as certain as I can be in the absence of tangible evidence that Ivory-billed still exists in Louisiana...However, If Arkansas' Elvis is any indication, we could have missed dozens of birds in the Pearl. Elvis is not only incredibly wary, seldom allowing more than a glimpse before flying off not to be relocated, but astoundingly quiet.

(Note: all bold font in this post is mine).