From the
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:
“It’s really devastating,” said David Sibley, a bird illustrator who has published five guides and who co-authored the Science article. “When the announcement was made, I was thrilled. It was a bird I’d always dreamed about seeing.”
...
“Each time we look at it [the Luneau video], we find more things we like about it and more things that are uniquely ivory-billed,” said David Luneau, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock electronics professor who captured the video with a camera mounted on a milk crate in a canoe almost two years ago.
For instance, Luneau pointed out, the bird in the film flies at 8.6 wingbeats per second for four seconds, faster than any wingbeat documented for a pileated.
...
By the way, to me, it appears that the oft-repeated "8.6 wingbeats per second for four seconds" claim is probably completely incorrect. I'm working on a detailed blog post on that subject.
Mark Robbins, an ornithologist at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum, said he and two other authors of a paper challenging the video also believe that the bird shown is a pileated.
“We put no credence in the video whatsoever,” he said.
Last summer, Robbins, along with Richard Prum, a Yale ornithologist, and Jerome Jackson, a zoologist at the Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, withdrew a challenge after receiving audio recordings made in the White River National Wildlife Refuge that seemed to catch a pair of ivory-billeds. In January, Jackson wrote a critical commentary published in The Auk, the quarterly ornithology journal published by the American Ornithologists’ Union.
On Thursday, Robbins said that after further analysis the recordings are questionable. He said that they were taken too close to a gravel road in an area where blue jays had been spotted making calls similar to those made by the woodpeckers.
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6 comments:
Some credit for a little shpilkes on the part of the New Democrat-Gazette ... for going after SCIENCE's reverse peer review on this a year ago ...
Monica Bradford, the executive editor of Science, said the original article last year detailing the ivory-billed video was reviewed in depth and, as commonly occurs, revisions were made to the article as a result, she said.
But continued debate commonly occurs as well. Newer areas of science tend to generate more controversy, she said, adding, “Some areas are black and white; others are open to interpretation.”
but listen, Ms. Marks ... don't get hacked by some low level FLACK at SCIENCE ... talk to Don Kennedy his self ... ask him to explain the TIMELINE - from "cryptic" email to publication in THREE WEEKS! Ask him to explain the pressure he put on the peer reviewers ... call the guy at VA Tech who Gorman quoted and ask him what happened - ask him if he saw the film before it went to print - ASK WHAT CHANGES WERE MADE AS A RESULT OF PEER REVIEW? Look for yourself at the slo mo video and ask yourself ... do you see a perched bird or a wing?
SCIENCE is trying to play this like there is a genuine "controversy" and YOU are swallowing the bait:
Both sides agree on one thing: Without a photo or crystal-clear video the debate likely will continue.
Please, this is a debate about the EVIDENCE - not about whether or not there MIGHT be a IBWO alive in AR. There MIGHT be - but NO EVIDENCE has been found. The most credible part of the story is the "testimony" of a handful of people - but the scientific evidence has not been presented.
Get SCIENCE to explain how they WHY they RUSHED this through peer review and THERE is your story.
The story that there is a "controversy" is DOA ... but the story that powerful people distorted the scientific process and PREVENTED critical outside analysis of the evidence is a GREAT STORY.
Tell the GREAT STORY ... not the story they want you to tell ... which is what you are doing.
Hmmm I keep listening to my northern Blue Jays, and unless they are doing JAAAAYH,JAAAAYH, or
queedle-queedle, they are very sotto-voce. The "KIENT-KENT-Kent-sournote" recordings sound so cadenced. Now with 20 new recordings supposedly coming out,
one demands they will sound much even more like what an IBWO sounds like. I don't think the sournote
necessarily rules out IBWO.
What would really help is something, anything recorded by a blue-jay that could explain away
the intriguing Kent notes. I mean
starlings are expert mimics - they'll do a Eastern Peewee in January that will really get your attention! But even if they can do this or a Red-Tailed Hawk,
can they do a convincing Pileated?
Similar question for the Blue Jay.
They can match the tone but the pairing of the higher and lower kent notes is very suggestive of
IBWOs. Will any recording obtained in the future be dismissed out of hand because of Blue Jay mimicry. Or will a dead-on IBWO call be accepted as probabilistic? Can all audio evidence be lumped into "doubtful"
just by one person saying: I thought I heard Blue Jays making Kent calls? I can be skeptical
of gunshots sounding too much like double-knocks. I will never believe a double-knock audio. But I need more to go on before I'll rule out Kent recordings. You'd
have better luck if they said:
"Mockingbird at the edge of the swamp did that one, then broke off
singing."
Paul Sutera
"For instance, Luneau pointed out, the bird in the film flies at 8.6 wingbeats per second for four seconds, faster than any wingbeat documented for a pileated"
Wingbeats of 8.6 beats per second from a bird that has just had the crap scared out of it by a group of people! That is 100% proof positive if one considers the fact that the bird flew off in a completely normal flight path with no consideration given to the fact of the fleeing flight a scared bird would take. Now if one take in to consideration a Pileated normally flys at a slower speed when under normal conditions, what would the fleeing flight of a scared to death Pileated be? Could one say it mos likely be faster in it's effort to escape danger. If that is so, then if it were an Ivorybill, could one not also say it's wingbeats would also be faster than normal when it's efforts were to escape danger. But one has to draw the conclusion if this point is considered valid, the Ivorybill doesn't ever change it's flight pattern under any condition. It fly's the same under normal conditions & when fleeing for it's safty alike.
The search group is down to grasping straws here. It trys to use points that apply to a normal Ivorybill when they are handy to validate their point, but on others, they use this Super Bird theroy to offset their lack of being able to prove their points when "Normal" does not apply.
Either we have a completely "Normal" bird here or we have a completely "Abnormal" bird. It cannot be both just when it happens to searve the point at hand!
Ol’ Fitzpatrick had a bird
E I E I O.
And on that bird he had some white
E I E I O.
Oh…..a kent kent here
and a kent kent there
Here a kent, there a kent.
Everywhere a kent kent.
Ol’ Fitzpatrick has a call, but give me a real photo.
(apologies to author unknown)
Ol’ Fitzpatrick had a bird
E I E I O.
And on that bird he had some white
E I E I O.
It's interesting how every since Sibley et al. came out, the quality and intelligence of the comments have made a decided turn to the worst. I figured having more scientific support of the Pileated hypothesis would have had the opposite effect.
Some of us take the motto listed at the top of this blog seriously. And we feel that belief in UFO's, Cold Fusion, Bigfoot, and Elvis is a joke until a good not blurry video or photo is produced. We even reserve the right to call bull on obvious decoys nailed to trees as obvious hoaxes.
I'm not wishing to speak for Tom or this blog. But many of us do believe this way. So.... E I E I O.
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