March has been an exciting month in the bayou for me. Though I have not seen ivory-bills I did find a freshly scaled tree with large bill marks. Similar tree scaling on trees in the White River have been studied and the results indicate that only an ivory-bill could have made the bill marks left by the woodpecker. The tree, a tupelo has tight bark and the number and size of the twigs still on the tree suggest that it as been dead less than two years. The scaling also reveals small beetle track that have been exposed in the cambium of the tree.
Monday, June 05, 2006
"Update" from Bobby Harrison
This Bobby Harrison update (dated March 20, 2006), has appeared on the Eagle Optics website (the bold font is mine):
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17 comments:
Paul Sykes, myself, and a couple other folks have a paper coming out in the Proceedings of the Large Woodpecker Symposium (from Brinkley Dec. 2005). The manuscript is currently in review, but I'm hoping the other authors won't be upset with me putting this section of the abstract up:
"While there appears to be a significant difference in bill mark widths found in the Cache and White River NWRs compared to those found in other southeastern states, we have not eliminated the possibility of observer bias or measurement error in the collection of data. We do suggest, however, that the two species can be distinguished by some but not all of the sign. There appears to be some difficulty in obtaining consistent measurements of these grooves due to various factors. We believe that a tool of 4 or 4.5 mm in width may help determine whether a mark may be too large to have been produced by a Pileated Woodpecker. Foraging sign, alone, can never be used to prove the existence of Ivory-bills, but it may provide researchers an additional tool to suggest their presence and to spur further intensive exploration of an area."
I wonder how Bobby looks in the IMAX film?
I hear that IMAX adds 300 pounds to a person's look.
Large Woodpecker Symposium? You mean to tell me back in Dec 2005 when they had "definitive" proof of the existance of the IBWO they called the conference the Large Woodpecker Symposium?
Why wouldn't you have called it the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Symposium? Could it be that all scientists except CLO et al were worried about putting their names on anything other than the Large Woodpecker Symposium?
Isn't this sort of the equivalent of Crop Circles? They couldn't have be created my people.
They were too big. They were too regular. Too precise.
Yes, clearly we can't rule out the possibility of an advanced civilization flying a gazillion miles, finding us and then destroying our corn and wheat fields with archaic Incan symbols and Mandelbrot Sets before disappearing never to be seen again.
Yeah...that's it...that's what happened.
Crop circle and aliens creating bark scalings similar to IBWOs or PIWOs or IBWO posers.
You guys are really on a high note lately.
STEVE HOLZMAN - Get's a minor courage award for posting on our ostracized web site.
There were many presentations about other Campephilus sp. hence the inclusive title.
Thanks, Steve for putting Harrison's remark in proper perspective. The tendency to take suggestive evidence and form definitive beliefs has been the hallmark failure of the proponents. Thanks for doing the hard work of measuring and searching. I look forward to reading your paper.
Well methinks it is great that people are actually measuring anything re:IBWO. So much of what has gone on is not repeatable, and not idependently verifiable. BH is once again acting as judge and jury giving himself a free pass on the woodpecker sign - no wonder even CLO is distancing themselves from him.
Questions for the good Dr. Holzman - can you post any photos of known PIWO sign? Are ther any surviving examples if IBWO work?
There is a story that goes like this.....CLO (with ML at the helm)supposedly got a donation of footage of an Imperial Woodpecker, footage that was shot maybe in the 1950s. They won't let anyone see the film, however, and ML yells at anyone who suggests it exists. I was wondering if they showed it at the Very Large Woodpecker (you gotta admit, that is one LAME title) Symposium?
Steve, thanks for posting the abstract and setting the record straight about foraging sign. The tendency of the faithful to take suggestive evidence and use it to form definitive beliefs continues ("only an ivory-bill could have made the bill marks"). Beyond the scaling and grooves, Harrison goes on to propose whole theories on foraging patterns and timing based on his unfounded assumptions ("the bird or birds are coming into Bayou de View only once or twice a month to feed"). Good to see science being attempted. I look forward to reading your paper.
Stupidity is not courage. Courage would have been to stand up in the Enormously Large Woodpecker Symposium and say this,
"I will not speculate on the existance of IBWO bark workings. The IBWO is extinct until proven otherwise and it hasn't yet been proven. In fact, we know almost nothing about the way Pileated Woodpeckers work bark and beetles in there entire range much less in the Arkansas area. Such a study will take money and time. But why? If IBWO's exist Bobby or some Booby will get a pic some time. Meanwhile I have real bird work to do. Thank you for inviting me. Next time f you get a good pic, I will show up in person rather than sending in this note"
"Well methinks it is great that people are actually measuring anything re:IBWO"
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Isn't that missing the point? They aren't measuring anything IBWO. The IBWO is extinct. So really they are just PRETENDING to measure anything IBWO. That would be the better statement.
We started this whole foraging sign stuff the first weekend after the announcement. We found some really interesting grooves on trees on the White River NWR. Remember this was the first weekend after the study, everyone was very excited and only a few were skeptical. (BTW, David Sibley was the only other birder we ran into that weekend). So we took some measurements, Paul measured 100s of IBWO and PIWO bills, and we measured 100s of grooves in other areas in the southeast, and boy it was looking really good. We couldn't find any big (greater than 3.5 mm) grooves OUTSIDE of the Cache or White. Later in the study it started looking like the bill-groove ration was not all that clean. (for example, a smaller bill can make a larger groove if more of that bill is involved in the chiseling). So even though we still have trouble explaining why we only found large marks in AR, we (rightfully in my mind) did NOT make any blanket statements about the marks. That is the conservative approach.
There still may be IBWOs out there. We were simply trying to find something to MEASURE, that might help point to there presence. It will never be a 'smoking gun'.
http://www.coastalgeorgiabirding.org/misc/grooves.htm
THis website needs revision, but it tells a little bit about the method.
-Steve
Hey, by searching google for "ivory billed george butler film" I found out that even Stanford alumni are getting in on this film deal. See below.
Class of 2003
Elisabeth Haviland James
I've spent much of the past year in the swamps and bayous of the Big Woods of Eastern Arkansas, on the football field in Tallahassee, and in the mysterious Mississippi Delta. Last October, I signed on as a producer of two feature documentaries intended for theatrical release with veteran filmmaker George Butler. "The Lord God Bird" tells the tale of the rediscovery of the iconic Ivory Billed Woodpecker in 2004, the resultant full-scale search, and the mythology surrounding the majestic swamps this elusive bird could inhabit
Oh my god, she worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer too!
This is good.
Steve Holzman said:
"Remember this was the first weekend after the study, everyone was very excited and only a few were skeptical."
Dear Steve-
First of all, we look forward to reading your paper in its entirety.
Secondly, thanks for taking a rational, objective, and conservative approach in analyzing your data. We wish that the same could be said for most of the other CLO "large woodpecker research" that has taken place.... Unfortunately, even inconclusive results are used by CLO to promote their agenda: "if it's inconclusive, then we just need to keep looking and listening."
Third, there may have only been a few OUTSPOKEN critics early on, but there were many, many critics born within minutes of the video being released. Most of those critics either could not speak openly for fear of reprisals for being "whistleblowers," or were politely waiting for CLO to produce something more tangible. We're still waiting.
Steve Holzman should be applauded for taking a rational, objective approach to this work. It's nice to hear someone applying caution. Compare it with the good folks over at BirdForum. Although there is one believer there who has found grooves that were suggestive of IBWO, but then devoted time to determining that the grooves were, in fact, made by PIWO, most of them find something very subjective and then immediately move on to finding the next piece of subjective evidence. Or in many cases not even finding evidence but instead interpreting someone else's subjective evidence as scientific fact. There was one guy a while back who said something along the lines of "We're not looking for proof. We've found that. What we're doing now is determining the size of the population". You couldn't have a rational discussion with those guys no matter how hard you tried.
There's another name besides irrational -
Fanatic
Fanatical
Similar to Fundamentalist or Evangelical
Strong bark scaling indication of immaturity and youthfulness.
(If I spelled something wrong, I don't care.)
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