Addendum: Tom Nelson's response to this article underscores the skeptics' clear dependency on treating a single individual's (Tanner's) observations of a half-dozen Ivory-bills, in a single location, 60+ years ago, as gospel truth for all Ivory-bills, for all time. Were we to take observations (no matter how good) of 6 human beings (from 60 years ago no less) and generalize them to all humans the potential fallacy (absurdity?) of this approach would be obvious.In reality, it's not just Tanner, it's not just one location, and it's not just six birds.
Tanner's observations are consistent with the reports of many other observers, including Allen and Kellogg (with Florida observations); John Dennis' observations in Cuba; and the late Roger Tory Peterson in the Singer Tract.
Tanner lists six known Ivory-bills in the Singer Tract as the population faded away in 1939; on page 39, he lists the territories of seven pair and four young observed by others there in 1934.
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4 comments:
I've come to the conclusion that Cyberthrush really doesn't believe that the Ivory Bill lives. Oh, I think at the beginning he did.
But lately it's just about trying to stir controversy enough to keep his blog alive. But it's difficult to argue the believer's side now. It makes for weak arguments. So the blog is weak. All he can do is throw up "straw dogs". And we all know how easy those are to knock over.
It's ironic becuase at one time Cyberthrush had 125 comments to one of his posts. But that so freaked him out that he stopped all comments for a while. Even now he still allows very few through. Anyone will tell you that that is the death for any blog.
Can you say, "shoot yourself in the foot"?
Could someone make a list for us of all the stupid excuses that believers are making for this bird?
For instance,
1.it's now a super skulker
2.it's home range is now 100's of sq miles
3.If we don't accept fishcrow's observations (and others) then why accept Tanners.
4.double knocks are diagnotic.
5.Seven "good" sightings can't all be wrong
6.Skeptics HAVE to prove that the Ivory Bill is extinct. (not the other way around)
7."The Tanner birds didn't just die, you know!" (I guess this means they live in a condo in florida still making babies?)
8.These birds can't be found if the leaves are not off the trees.
9.Ghillie suits are necessary to hunt for a rare bird.
10.Nothing else could make that bark scaling.
What else?
What else?
11.They are intelligent enough to be able to count, therefore can't be seen by multiple observers at the same time
Well now careful because Tanner's observation that the birds occupy 2-3 square miles can also be used by believers to say: "see it's such a small area, we're missing the area and only seeing new birds in search of mates/territory".
So if we're missing the few square miles where the bird nests, that can explain, to a believer, why the birds are never reliably...ahem, seen, heard, found, photographed. You have the nesting sedentary IBWOs and then wide ranging IBWOs that never sit still for a minute. He sees you and because he's not mated, he flies in a straight line for 20 miles till he hits the next county ... See, there are two behaviors and each one cleverly thwarts the searcher. *sigh*.
Then they stop and give foreign language classes to Blue Jays ....
before moving miles away... (audible sighs, shrugs shoulders)
Paul in New Paltz, NY
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