Tuesday, June 27, 2006

"IBWO or Bust"

More photos from the 2005-2006 search season are now available here.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't help but think the skeptics gang blew it with Ms Peacock - basically just playing into a stereotype of a slightly unhinged and very insecure bunch. If you re-read her comments they're cautiously ambiguous, which is a smarter position for a reporter than overtly taking sides. She says she's not 100% convinced by the evidence but thinks well of Lammertink's character. This is not extremists stuff...nothing to merit the dismissal she got.

She asks why we have a dog in the hunt. Well here's just one more reason of many...'cause it's a great story, darn it.

Forgive the "Perfect Storm" analogy, but that's what we have here... Mistaken IBWO sightings are a dime-a-dozen, have been for decades, but what if just once all the pieces fell into place just right? Could a whisper on the internet start chain reaction that in a matter of days had major conservation groups irreversibly locked into a pact that could alter our view of natural history, or also could destroy their reputations? Could those groups, together or individually, find a way a disentangle themselves before it's too late?

It's a cool story and if there's one chance in a million that Ms Peacock or a peer of hers agree, they'd be wise not to get to chummy with this bunch.

Anonymous said...

I vote for Kristina Baker for female volunteer of the decade.

Anonymous said...

Why aren't there any pictures of birds?

Anonymous said...

I know of at least one person in those pictures that wishes his name was no longer associated with the effort.

Maybe that's why Cornell kept all the copyrights?!

Birding is NOT a crime!!!! said...

I was thinking the same thing about Kristina Baker.

I'd much rather see photos of her than of some blurry Pileateds.

Anonymous said...

You have to admit that Ms. Peacock's slice-and-dice of various "Skeptic" contributors' comments was pretty snippy. I thought that her newspaper articles were fairly neutral, and we she first got on "Skeptic" she seemed truly interested in where we are coming from. To which she got at least some genuine responses. So, I for one was taken aback by her counter-response. Thgen she took her toys and went home. I was trying to re-engage her in this forum with some legitimate counter-arguments, but she's being coy. C'mon Leslie, you know that you are reading this..... Give us another chance. And do some of those interviews.

Super Anon

Anonymous said...

Weekend revelation.

Gallagher and Harrison are both dyslexic. This could help explain their strange field sketches (that, fortunately, they were able to draw after composing themselves after they got through crying like babies). Actually, the drawings are dyslexified so that, actually, front is back and back is front, and top is down and bottom is up. Reinterpretation of the sketches with this in mind, they look just like a Pileated as seen from below and coming towards the observers. Mystery solved!

Super Anon

Anonymous said...

Think about what "could have been" for these poor '05-'06 search team members. If they hadn't been forced into a buddy system, and if Bobby and/or Tim (either or both Tims) and/or Fishcrow had been there working them up into a frenzy every day and night, then they would have been much more competitive in generating IBWO sightings. Tims, Bobby, Fishcrow (with, what, at least 20 combined sightings among them?) don't want anyone else in the spotlight (or at the lecture podium with check in hand).

Anonymous said...

I can't help but think the skeptics gang blew it with Ms Peacock - basically just playing into a stereotype of a slightly unhinged and very insecure bunch.

Slightly unhinged? What the hell is that supposed to mean?

She says she's not 100% convinced by the evidence

That's nice. When she says she's not 10% convinced I'll take her seriously because the "evidence" for the IBWO continued existence is really laughably poor.

Anonymous said...

Her comments are cautiously ambiguous?

The woman is swift boating Jerome Jackson. She is the one who is framing him as a "professional doubter" ...

Now jackson may be many things but we've all read the 1999 Zickefoose send up of Jackson and for the record he isn't a "professional doubter". When he isn't calling bullshit on the "evidence" he is apparently going to little old ladies back yards to look at the loblollies ... because one really might contain an IBWO ...

He was the nations top ranking expert on this species and the author of the BNA acct. And Leslie says that Fitz. says that he didn't tell Jackson because well we aren't sure what he told Leslie, but it had something to do with a "circus" in Pearl River and some droids that she isn't looking for.

Personally I agree with Fishcrow why aren't his sightings just a good, just as valid as Fitzcrows?

Why?

Well Leslie won't ask, because although she is pissed that a non wage slave writer like Jack Hitt stole her concept of 13 ways ... she isn't going to write this story about how the only think between Fitz et al and talking to IBWO whisperers on cell phones is their "personalities" ... and the amount of money they can generate for their institutions.

No, the big woods partnership is about to look like the Coalition provisional authority and leslie is nothing but an imbed.

Unhinge this ... amigo


The Carpinterio Real

Anonymous said...

Yeah, Ms. Peacock said she was married to the TNC. It was her mea culpa. What do we want? To ruin her marriage?

Sometimes the simpliest answers are just that. Simple.

What we need to find is a spinster librarian turned reporter. Now that would be a useful Skeptic!

Anonymous said...

Golly gee, I just can't help but laugh when I see these party pic in the woods photos of "research groups" having fun in the swamp on someone else's dime. Bet some donors would like to see some clear pics of a "rediscovered bird".

If Peacock wants a story then I guess the headlines should be When You See Cornell Appear -- Ivorybills Disappear.....

Mrs. Peacock should ride down to Tensas River NWR and ask about the museum pair of ivorybills and nest cavity in the office museum which Tanner had arranged for the office to get from Cornell back in 1986. When she asks where the birds came from and how they were obtained she will be shocked. She may be told Cornell took as many as 8 of the Singer Tract ivorybills for museum specimens off John's Bayou in the 1940's when they saw the last remaining habitat was being destroyed.

And this is the same institution the USFWS trusts to conduct research on "possible ivorybills" today. Now there's you a story.

Bona Ditto
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