Monday, October 30, 2006

Tilley Landing

On the Auburn Ivory-bill site, the first suggested "place to search" is Tilley Landing (the bold font and italics are mine):
A gravel road runs from Highway 81 east into mature swamp forest ending at two small canoe launches that feed into Lost Lake, a beautiful oxbow lake. This area has numerous large cavities and scaled trees, including feeding sign on spruce pine along the road, suggesting that it is regularly used by Ivory-billed Woodpeckers.
Here's my idea of a pretty good day: stroll along this road and finally capture that "million-dollar video" of one of the large, noisy, diurnal Ivory-bills regularly using the area. Later, after arranging a book deal and contacting the Explorer's Club, I'd relax with a nice lunch at the covered picnic pavilion:
The District has provided numerous boat landings, and at Tilley Landing recreational area on Lost Lake, a covered picnic pavilion with tables and grills, parking and a stabilized small boat ramp. Tilley Landing is located south of Redbay, off Highway 81. Hunting, fishing, boating, camping, hiking, horseback riding, bird-watching and nature appreciation are all available.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It doesn't need to make any sense if you truly believe.

I hope the Explorers Club someday comes to their senses and rescinds their awards to the IBWO "discoverers."

Remember what happened to Dr. Frederick Cook? He claimed to have climbed Mt. McKinley, but was proven to have made false claims.
The combination of claims, suspicions, and rebuttals finally impelled the Explorers Club to call Doctor Cook before a committee of peers to clear himself. He refused to testify and disappeared. The Explorers Club, of which Doctor Cook had been president, expelled him in late 1909. He was also dropped from the rolls of the American Alpine Club and various geographical and learned societies. www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/dena/hrs3.htm

Anonymous said...

This area has numerous large cavities and scaled trees, including feeding sign on spruce pine along the road, suggesting that it is regularly used by Ivory-billed Woodpeckers.

Surely the Auburn folks simply forgot to mention that all the signs of foraging are on the treesides which face AWAY from the road.

Only a mentally ill or drugged IBWO would ever dare to rip bark off a tree in full full of a road!

If, in fact, the signs of foraging are visible from the road, there are two explanations. First, the foraging signs were left by pileateds.

The alternative is that IBWOs left foraging signs that were consistent with pileated foraging signs in order to confuse searchers who are intimately aware of the IBWO's "typical" foraging habits.

If I may borrow the logic of the IBWO researchers, "There is no way to distinguish between these two possibilities at present."

Anonymous said...

There is no reason that the IBWOs can't bark-scale on the road-side of the trees as long as they do it when no one is looking.....

Anonymous said...

There is no reason that the IBWOs can't bark-scale on the road-side of the trees as long as they do it when no one is looking.....

That violates all know laws of bird physics.

Anonymous said...

If it is possible that the Ivory Billed Woodpecker is cohabitating the areas of Tilley Landing. Why has the state allowed hunting in this area?