Tuesday, June 20, 2006

The "tree spacing" excuse

From this article (previously posted in the comment section:
“What was your most exciting moment?” “One early morning while paddling up the bayou a Pileated Woodpecker flew over the bayou – it was a brief encounter and it was so huge and I saw so much white and I wanted it to be an Ivory-billed – but it was not. Sightings are very brief because the trees are dense - 3 ft apart or less – that allows only glimpses and momentary views of birds. I see now why it has been so hard to document a bird with pictures.”
Check out the pictures at the bottom of the article--do those trees look to be "3 ft apart or less"?

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know about you but the lady who saw 3 IBWOs....I want her on my team!!

Anonymous said...

....and he's now helping out on the Arvin Texas Search! Can't be long now, TB!!

Anonymous said...

http://www.valleynaturecenter.org/14.html

OMIGOD! There's ivory bills right outside the windows above their table and these dudes are just gabbing away!!!!

Anonymous said...

Ah, poor Martin. He was enjoying the quiet life, snow falling on the mariposas, and he sadly posts his IBWO thingie and

http://www.valleynaturecenter.org/gallery.html

He really should send it to the crack team at Cornell. I'm sure Fitzcrow will buff his World Series trophy, pull his Sibley or Kaufmann or Dunn Guide from the shelf, and identify the bird for him. I think he'll agree with thee Connecticut Wrbler, but methinks he'll be wrong about that one too.

Go with Mourning Warbler mi amigo. Mourning Warbler.

I need to confess to a guilty pleasure..whenever I see .."Copywrite Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology" I copy the pictures, remove the copywrite and post them on the internet.

For some reason it bugs me to see all these travelogue-type pictures of freakin trees and dogs and stuff and see "Copywrite CLO". I guess I'm petty. Low, mean, petty and vindictive. But still, if they don't have IBWO pictures, let the people have the dang copywright you cheeseballs.

Anonymous said...

What is up with the caption to this picture?

http://www.valleynaturecenter.org/15.html

Is the dog named Fitz?

Anonymous said...

Yep.... CLO sure did have a good group of experts out there.... They even identified a great blue egret ...

Anonymous said...

Just for the sake of comparison:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/06/20/skorea.stemcell.ap/index.html

Hwang was indicted last month for allegedly accepting 2 billion won (US$2.1 million) in private donations based on the outcome of the falsified research and embezzling about 800 million won (US$831,000) in private and government research funds....

Researcher Kim Sun-jong ...said in court Tuesday he was "under serious pressure" to show Hwang he had produced cloned stem cells ...

...

Claims in Hwang's articles published in 2004 and 2005 to international acclaim started unraveling with media reports late last year ...

Hwang was fired in March as a professor at Seoul National University.

...

"The people, as high as their expectations were, felt a great sense of loss and mental anguish," the prosecutors said.


The Cornell authors should be happy that, relatively speaking, their bogus "rediscovery" has had very little impact in the world of industry where CEO's do not take kindly to being misled by Boys Who Cry Woodpecker.

Anonymous said...

Actually, everytime they show pictures of Arkansas search areas, I'm amazed at how small the trees are. I thought it was supposed to be some great old growth.

Anonymous said...

I too am surprised that most of the pictures coming out of AK show what looks like typical secound growth cypress/tupelo swamp. I have seen a few big trees, but I suspect that these are "skags", left by the first loggers because they had broken tops or twisted trunks.

Is this even the correct habitat? Take a look at Tanner sitting in a lawn chair while observing the Ivory-billed nest. No chest waders required...

Anonymous said...

If I peek from around this tree
There’s no telling what I’ll see
If I just see yet another tree
Will Mr. Gallagher be mad at me?

Anonymous said...

Can't you see! He's already mad at you. You, Skeptics, are the reason the bird can't be found again.

Negative energy!