He [Jim Fitzpatrick] also is one of a handful of people who have reported seeing an ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird thought extinct until Fitzpatrick and others reported sightings in Arkansas in 2004. However, there have been no recent sightings and the nation's best-known birder, David Sibley, has disputed the identification.Compare that paragraph with this euphoric article from April 2005.
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That is a telling article. The hype is beginning to go out of the reports. That crack about Sibley almost seems out of place in such a otherwise positive to slightly neutral piece.
Ouch. Jim probably is thinking about lowering his profile. Start putting in those qualifing words like..."might have been", "was probably", "highly likely"...when describing his own sighting.
John Fitzpatrick's brother, Jim, reported seeing an Ivory-billed Woodpecker on 5 April 2004. This is listed as the first sighting following the Gallagher-Harrison report and was the first of 3 single-observer sightings in April 2004. (It seems that once two-party teams were fielded, these one-person sightings diminished rapidly...)
Fitzpatrick et al. (Auk vol. 123, no. 2, 2006) gratuitously award Jim's sighting the distinction of being one of two reports lasting longer than the Luneau video, thus showing how erroneous Jackson's depiction of all the sightings as brief was. (Yeah, right.)
Jim Fitzpatrick claimed the bird was seen for just under 10 seconds. That is by his own estimation, however, not by any scientifically validated timer. In all that time, he first tried to raise his binoculars only at the the 7-8 second mark (taking this from his description in North American Birds vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 200-201). Finding those out of focus, he dropped them realizing that the bird would be out of view in the next 2 seconds. Didn't Fishcrow encounter similar troubles with out of focus optics? I think the bird, possibly a woodpecker, that Fitzpatrick encountered must have had its in-flight swuank waves fully engaged, thus baffling attempts to identify it or allow more than just the "white trailing edge" of the wing to be seen.
In some previous article listed in the Skeptic Blog, the other Fitz stated that he had seen an IBWO.
This article posted today is confusing on the various Fitz's and whom saw what.
The Carpinterio Real reminds the skeptic that Fitz (one and fitz 2) now sees only the "big picture" they are "focused" on conservation, on the habitat, on the "success" of the bigwoods conservation partnership.
Try as you might hold them accountable to all this "woodpecker" sighting stuff - they have moved on.
All you are going to get is "13 ways" etc ... etc ... from second tier outdoor writers and curiosity seekers.
This thing is OVER. Stick a fork in it ... it is done.
Sad but true - for a time I thought that this story was alive again ... it isn't.
Fitz is talking about the "big picture" and we are talking to ourselves.
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