It's an oft-repeated pattern: an Ivory-bill searcher cries after a really lousy glimpse of a fleeing bird.
When recently recalling this particular March 2005 sighting, the searcher remembers hearing kent-like calls in the area on the previous day. In accounts from last year (account 1; account 2 [PDF-see page 14]), there is no mention of the kent-like calls.
Note that the "post-glimpse crying" description also appears to vary (from "almost in tears" to "tears for hours").
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"He might be positive in his own mind and his own heart," Dr. Rosenberg said. "We're not saying he didn't see it."
I don't get it ... is rosenberg a skeptic? Is he saying that ANYONE has seen it?
If falling down in tears isn't proof positive that you have seen "the bird" ... what is?
What's with all the bawling?
Harrison: " Waa Waa Waa "
Gallagher: " Boo Hoo Hoo "
Now this guy.
Cornell should be handing out Binkees along with the camcorders and GPS units.
It certainly sounds like Rosenberg has some doubts based on reading those final paragraphs. The fact that roughly 150 experts spent 5 months searching with the most modern equipment and found absolutely nothing could have enlightened him.
Brief, visual, fleeting sightings of some bird just don't hack it anymore.
"He might be positive in his own mind and his own heart," Dr. Rosenberg said. "We're not saying he didn't see it."
In his heart and mind, what is this crap Ken. Shame on you. You can't have actually said that. What do you think this, shades of the Jimmy Carter "Playboy" interview ("I have lusted in my heart after other women...") This is, yes IS, a freakin extinct bird, and you are flogging this dead horse with no mercy. You actually had some credibility before this debacle. Oh My!
You didn't include it in the paper cause it wasn't a good sighting - stringy some would say. You put 30 or so folks in the same area for a freakin year and saw Jack, nada, and now you give out this catsick blather! Just say it wasn't good enough for the paper and put us all out of our misery.
Oh, and yeah, if it wasn't good enough to include in the paper, why is it good enough to keep babbling on about. You are just trying to muddy the water, make the old seem new, and spin it just a little bit more. This is irresponsible.
Life was better before these jokers defiled the name of that mighty bird. They are, well, icky.
Rosenberg et al. didn't count that guy's sighting for purposes of the Science article because it didn't meet the the search team's criteria.
It's fine to be skeptical about the findings, but I strongly urge everyone to be respectful of the perspective, motives and work of others. Rosenberg is one of the many top-notch ornithologists involved in the IBWO effort. I've met Ken several times and know that he's a thoughtful, thorough scientist that, at a miniumum, deserves a degree of professional courtesy.
It's not fair to make fun about people who get emotional because of an unusual bird sighting. For me another proof that they saw an Ivory-bill. I am convinced that these birders can clearly differ between Pileated Woodpeckers and a bird they have never seen before. They all mentioned that their sighting was of a woodpecker different in size, wing-pattern and flight style. Not to forget Mary Scott's sighting in Arkansas the year before. She also reported that she saw the white back pattern on the roosted bird. I don't understand why everybody is asking for photographic proof. Remember the guy who made pictures in the seventies. The authenticity of his photos was doubted. So what would it help to provide the sceptics with new material to make fun of?
Michael (m.strobl4@chello.at)
Anon said:
It's fine to be skeptical about the findings, but I strongly urge everyone to be respectful of the perspective, motives and work of others. Rosenberg is one of the many top-notch ornithologists involved in the IBWO effort. I've met Ken several times and know that he's a thoughtful, thorough scientist that, at a miniumum, deserves a degree of professional courtesy.
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Professional courtesy has been granted to CLO for a long time. You don't get to keep it in the face of unrelenting spin, and continuing bad science - no matter how good your reputation was before. Why should we be respectful of their motives when the motives are, unlike the rest of the project, so transparent?
CLO scientists (since we are uncomfortable with names now) are spinning this to save their careers, and they are doing it at the expense of an accurate record of this birds demise, and at the expense of the reputation of conservation biology/ecology. The CLO team has thrown under the bus so many facts and tennents of good scientific thought that they deserve to have their credibility questioned.
They have looked for years, and found nothing. The most likely answer is that they were wrong from the start. If they still think they were right then they are niether thoughtful or thorough.
When the rest of us go into the halls of government to advocate for the next critter at the edge of extinction do not doubt that we will be judged by CLO's collective mistake. This will cause decades of misery for those of us trying to save real species.
Marching in lockstep with their party line (which ever party line is in today's talking points)has gotten us nowhere. They need to stop doing so much damage.
They all mentioned that their sighting was of a woodpecker different in size, wing-pattern and flight style.
Actually, they didn't.
And they didn't see the dorsal stripes.
And they didn't see the white bill.
And it's because they didn't see an Ivory-bill.
"Not to forget Mary Scott's sighting in Arkansas the year before."
I think Mary Scott is an honest, sincere person. But I think Mary Scott is seeing what she wants to see, not what's there. From "The Grail Bird" with Bob Russell being quoted:
I've been on three trips with her and she's seen Ivory-bills on all three trips, so no, I don't believe her. He goes on to recount where Mary shouts "I have an Ivory-Bill!" and when they rush to the spot a Red-headed woodpecker flies out, but no Ivory-Bill. She saw what she wanted to see. She was confused by a bird maybe 1/10 the size of an IBWO. She took one field mark (white trailing edge) and made a dramatically different bird into an IBWO.
It is clear to me that the aberrant Pileateds photographed in Cornell's search area were the source of the IBWO reports. That's why no one can get a good look at an IBWO.
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Professional courtesy has been granted to CLO for a long time. You don't get to keep it in the face of unrelenting spin, and continuing bad science - no matter how good your reputation was before. Why should we be respectful of their motives when the motives are, unlike the rest of the project, so transparent?
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Since when is defending one's research "spin." You think Fitzpatrick et al.'s response in Science to Sibley was "spin?" You think the video analysis they posted on the CLO Web site was "spin?"
The Cornell folks aren't spinning. They are working their tails off to develop further evidence, and I'm willing to bet everyone of them is just as eager for more evidence as any of us are.
And, your comment about "marching in lockstep w/ a partyline" is hyperbolic at best. Just because my perspective may be different than yours should not be a license to accuse me of following anyone's partyline. After all, I don't notice your rhetoric being all that different than dozens of others posting on this site. Does that make your comments just another recessitation of a partyline? I doubt it.
Civility, respect and debate can go well together.
"The Cornell folks aren't spinning."
Pul-LEEZE! Cornell's big problem is they can't get any solid evidence. If they had solid evidence, their paper wouldn't be circling the drain right now.
They need some excuse as to why they can't actually get one decent look, let alone a photograph. So they spin. I paraphrase:
Cornell: "It's remote."
Truth: No, it isn't.
Cornell: (Last year.) "It's too wet."
Cornell: (This year.) "It's too dry."
Truth: You can get around just fine, thank you. They consistently spend a good day searching, and are back eating burgers and fries in the evenings.
Cornell: "There's not enough people searching."
Bobby Harrison (Cornell): "There's too many people searching."
Truth: This is the biggest birding search in history. There's more than enough people searching that area if the bird is there. Clearly, it isn't.
Cornell: We have a long way to go to search the whole area. It's very, very big. And brutal. With savage bugs and mucky ground and poisonous snakes.
Truth: You don't NEED to search the whole area, and Cornell knows it. The bird moves. (At least it would if it weren't extinct.) Find the corridors, and the bird will come. They've been "ambushing" the corridors for years, with predictable (negative) results. Hunters brave the savage wilderness just fine.
Cornell: "The video clearly shows an IBWO."
Truth: Even if it DID show an IBWO, it is NOT clear, as the current debate conclusively proves.
Ever cry when your favorite dog died?
Anon wrote:
The Cornell folks aren't spinning. They are working their tails off to develop further evidence, and I'm willing to bet everyone of them is just as eager for more evidence as any of us are.
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Well, developing evidence, rather than analysing evidence seems pretty much like the definition of spin to me.
Anon wrote
Since when is defending one's research "spin." You think Fitzpatrick et al.'s response in Science to Sibley was "spin?" You think the video analysis they posted on the CLO Web site was "spin?"
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Yeah on both counts. I think when you use a stiff-winged model to replicate a bird in flight, videotape it as many times as you want and use the resulting "evidence" you have "developed" to make statements like.... birds wings don't twist in flight and....the results were more consistent with IBWO, yeah, I'd say you are spinning. They left most major criticisms in Sibley et al. unanswered, and "created" new evidence (like the PIWO flap rates - so WRONG, no stand. dev. or stand. error, no mean etc)to spin. The audio evidence used to determin the flap reate of IBWO is just silly, and yes, it is spun too to be a fact (n=1, sd = infinity).
anon wrote:
And, your comment about "marching in lockstep w/ a partyline" is hyperbolic at best. Just because my perspective may be different than yours should not be a license to accuse me of following anyone's partyline. After all, I don't notice your rhetoric being all that different than dozens of others posting on this site. Does that make your comments just another recessitation of a partyline? I doubt it.
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The partyline refered to the closed and secret world at CLO - It did not refer to you. Try not to take it personally
Nothing gets out without the of CLO without the minister of woodpecker marketing's approval, and the people I know there and on the search teams are frightened of the obvious repercussions if they were to say anything un-approved. That is not to say everyone there feels that way, but the ones I know do feel that way.They need to bring in more outside experts to help them out of this, and stop shutting down internal dissent.
It really would have helped this debacle if they were more transparent, but they are acting like they had a product, not a bird. That means they had to sell the product, that means marketing, that means secrecy, that created this mess. Again, opinion, but time will tell.
I don't want to be less-than-civil, and I do want to engage in debate, but stiff-winged models, bad videos, 99% sure sightings, millions of fed, state, and NGO dollars, recordings of "possible kent-like calls", black-white-black objects, etc etc etc combine to make this seem like a train wreck in very slow motion.
This just should not be this hard, maybe it is so hard and people are "working their tails off" cause they are on a doomed mission. It is reasonable to assume that there is not an IBWO in the areas where they have looked, and, it is reasonable to assume that there never was one.
...but I note that while defending the CLO spin you didn't bother to talk about the fact that they have no new REAL information, and that they are damaging the reputation of conservation science for years to come. This is the real issue.
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