One astonishing snippet:
The Sibley article was an interesting but ineffective exercise. Kenn Kaufman's comments could easily be chalked up mostly to honeymoon "hangover" while Jerry Jackson's Auk article was very entertaining. So Far - I see nothing which even comes close to causing any concern or real doubts about the existence of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in Arkansas.Elsewhere in that post, Barksdale employs what I'd call a classic "cough-mumble" defense.
There's more from Barksdale here.
Posts
6 comments:
1. I want these IBWO True Believers (Mr. Barksdale, et al) to stop criticizing Intelligent Design or anything else that has no basis in fact.
2. Hard to believe that a prior blogger believes anything Mary Scott says. Although she now has a painted IBWO bird named after her and the painting is being sold on her website.
3. We should respect the people who wept (hey, I wept just hearing the initial news.) Alright make fun of me if you want.
4. Our frustration lies in the burden of proof should be on CLO and they spun it to put the burden of proof on the skeptics.
5. We are now wasting millions of Federal and non profit dollars and thousand of labor hours searching for an extinct bird.
What I find "very entertaining" is looking at the actual source pixels in the interlaced fields of the Luneau clip. The number of actual pixels is laughable. Artifacts caused by motion blur, lack of focus, and poor resolution are everywhere. Making bold statements about what the video shows or does not show based on a few de-interlaced and magnified frames is full of hazards.
I agree with Tim that a proper analysis that takes into account the video technology has not been presented by either side, and I don't think a proper analysis is possible without a thorough understanding and presentation of the technology. I doubt there are many (any?) in the birding community that have prior experience interpreting bird video of this poor quality. Most people shooting video of birds wouldn't even bother to start to record a bird under these circumstances.
I would suggest that the complexities of video imaging,although interesting, are overstated and that whereas any given frame may be nearly unintelligible, the frames viewed collectively tell a great deal. If for example you group the frames by stages within the wingbeat, a frame from one wingbeat looks a lot like a frame from the next wingbeat. When you look at six different frames from the same point in the wingbeat, you get a pretty clear averaged sense of what's going on. Video technology won't change the big picture.
I count 18 frames showing various stages of upstroke. 18 out of 18 show absolutely no white... in fact you can hardly see anything at all. This is because during the upstroke the wing is folded partially closed, the upper wing is facing out to the side, and the lower wing is facing in toward the body. This is complete consistent with pileated and completely wrong for ivory-billed. 18 out of 18 times.
The "videography is tricky" folks bicker about which frames might or might not show a black trailing edge and whether or not that edge is wide enough, and how does motion overstate the white, oh my! Very academic, very interesting... But meanwhile we're asked to believe that a folded wing that can show a huge flash of white in frame 33.3 will never show a thing in 18 partially folded images that follow.
Individually looking at all 18 upstroke frames I don't know that you'll find a single pixel of meaningful information, but viewed collectively the missing information is completely consistent and consistently damning.
The evidence in the video falls clearly and unambiguously on the side of pileated. Believer want us to think this is all very complicated. It's not.
p.d., ann arbor, mi
I agree that arguing the details of trailing edges on the underside of the wing is missing the forest when the entire bird essentially "disappears" during each upstroke.
The frames where the wing is in the lower part of the downstroke and mainly shows bright white toward the tips is also completely consistent with Pileated and totally inconsistent with Ivorybill.
Frame 939b shows 2 bright white dots with invisible wings between there and the invisible body. Black disappears, white typically doesn't. White wingtips on an otherwise black wing is diagnostic for PIWO.
I agree that this type of evidence is accessible to most people with a little explanation and very strongly makes the case for PIWO and against IBWO.
Mr. Barksdale is really just a Cornell hanger-on. Even Dr. Fitzpatrick pays him no mind. Why are we even debating about this fellow.
Mr. Barksdale was one of the original co-authors of the Cornell paper and probably the one with the most video experience. If he's still making statements about the video definitely being an ivorybill and claiming technical reason why this is so then it is worth discussing technical issues, etc. of the video that counter that claim. The discussion is about the evidence, not about Mr. Barksdale.
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