Q and A with Fitzpatrick/Jackson

On January 20, 2006, John Fitzpatrick and Jerome Jackson answered selected viewer questions about the ivory-billed woodpecker on the Nova scienceNOW website here.

Here is a paragraph from Fitzpatrick (the bold font is mine):

Finding a bird as rare as an ivory-billed woodpecker is a tough job for a number of reasons, even with the concerted planning and effort we have been carrying out. (1) We are searching for a bird that as far back as the 1890s was famous for being wary and difficult to locate. (2) The area we are searching includes 550,000 acres of forest, and the bird or birds could be anywhere within it. (3) If the bird that was originally seen was a dispersing, unpaired male, it could be hundreds of miles away by now. Even if it has a permanent home range, it could use 10-20 square miles of this type of forest (ivory-bills may travel 10 to 20 kilometers per day in search of food). (4) In these swamp forests, searchers are limited to going where they can by canoe or must walk slowly and laboriously, sometimes through hip-deep water or thick mud that sucks at their boots and makes every step a struggle. (5) Even if searchers happen to get within range of an ivory-bill, there is no guarantee that they will see it. The trees are dense, making it difficult to see birds even 50 yards away. Ivory-bills are notoriously elusive. Several sightings so far have been glimpses of this magnificent bird as it travels in rapid flight above the treeline, appearing and disappearing so quickly that the viewer is lucky to get binoculars on it, much less a steady shot with a camera.

Paper on Cuban Ivory-bills, 1948

People sometimes claim that our only Ivory-bill data is from Jim Tanner's Singer Tract (Louisiana) work. Note that we also have data from Allen and Kellogg, which includes information about Florida birds.

There is also an interesting paper on Cuban Ivory-bills by John Dennis, published in The Auk in October 1948--the paper is available here. Dennis' Ivory-bill observations in Cuba are consistent with the published Tanner/Allen/Kellogg observations in many ways, such as the bird's lack of wariness, its noisiness, its generally sedentary nature, etc:

My interest in the fate of the Cuban bird was aroused by Mr. Davis Crompton of Worcester, Massachusetts, who has made several trips to the South in efforts to locate colonies of the American Ivory-bill.
...
The largest number [an informant] saw was a group of six, this in 1941. The group followed him through the woods for some distance, exhibiting great curiosity. In the same year he observed a nesting site in a dead pine. Interestingly enough, a young bird, still unable to fly, was brought to him by some lumbermen. It was fed "white grubs, these being procured by a man who was paid to chop them out of dead pine logs." When the bird was able to fly, it was released. Our informant kept track of several pairs, one of which nested at the same site for two seasons.
...
At this point we separated; I made my way to a vantage point where I could watch for birds in flight and Mr. Crompton remained in the same spot to get some rest or sleep after our fatiguing climb. Within fifteen minutes Mr. Crompton was awakened by the calls of an Ivory-bill in near-by trees while, in the mean time, I spotted a second bird engaged in shredding bark from a small pine. Either both these birds were females, as their black crests suggested, or one of them was a female (this we later established) and the other was an immature male.
...
While examining the vicinity of the nesting site, I came upon the skull of a woodpecker which was later identified as that of an Ivory-bill.

Cuban Ivory-bills evidently sometimes left hard evidence when they died.

...
Only a few general observations are available on the behavior of the birds at the nesting tree. When we first arrived in the vicinity, the birds appeared somewhat agitated. At no time, however, would I say that they were shy. The agitation manifested itself by considerable vocal activity and by frequent changes of place on the nest. But as the birds became used to our presence, they seemed positively lethargic as they loitered in near-by trees.

But whatever the outcome in regard to the forces at work upon the environment, the few remaining Ivory-bills are in constant danger of being exterminated by humans. For example, early in 1948 a dead bird was seen nailed to the side of a native hut. We found that it was a common practice for the people in this region to take young woodpeckers out of their nest and use them for food.

Dennis' Cuban Ivory-bills in 1948 were evidently subject to some "hunting" pressure, yet, as related above, they were still relatively tame and noisy.

Paid IBWO searchers in Texas?

Someone just emailed me a link to this post from the Texas Birding List (the bold font is mine):

I received the news earlier this week that my proposal to seek Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in Texas had been funded - not quite fully funded, but with enough to start the chase. My reaction was elation laced with a certain amount of misgivings, and also with a sense of awesome responsibility. I have been entrusted with a considerable sum of public money, your money, to look for something that may not exist...

One of the first steps we will take will be to make reconnaissance flights over the search areas, which are the corridors of bottomland forest along the lower Trinity, Neches, and Sabine Rivers in southeastern Texas. From the air we will identify those areas that appear to have large, intact tracts of mature forest so that they can marked for priority ground searches. At the same time we will be watching for the birds themselves. A flying Ivory-billed Woodpecker,viewed from above, should be quite conspicuous from a low, slow-flying aircraft.

I wonder why there is no mention of using existing aerial photography to screen potential search areas?

Jerome Jackson's Auk article

It's now available online here (PDF format, 15 pages).

1/20/06 update--I think this article is chock-full of good information. Here are a few notable items (the bold font is mine):

...There is also an error in the online supplementary material that accompanies Fitzpatrick et al. (2005a). Figure S5A is likely a branch stub (J. Fitzpatrick pers. comm., 29 July 2005), rather than a perched Ivory-billed Woodpecker as suggested by Fitzpatrick et al. (2005b). That error was still in the online material through mid-December 2005.

Above, Jackson reports John Fitzpatrick's admission that the so-called "six-pixel bird" is likely not a bird.

...
I had seen several photographs of Pileated Woodpeckers with aberrant white on the wings and, indeed, within a week of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker announcement, I received such a photo from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the sender asking, “Why isn’t this an Ivory-bill?”
...
Prum, Robbins, Brett Benz, and I remain steadfast in our belief that the bird in the Luneau video is a normal Pileated Woodpecker. Others have independently come to the same conclusion, and publication of independent analyses may be forthcoming.
...
For scientists to label sight reports and questionable photographs as “proof” of such an extraordinary record is delving into “faith-based” ornithology and doing a disservice to science.
...
...for an individual to be able to say that an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in flight, at 100 meters, is much larger than a Pileated Woodpecker implies an ability to easily distinguish between a meter stick and a yard stick down the length of a football field.
...
Are we really dealing with a species that has become reclusive and silent within the past century, as some have suggested? I do not think so. While game animals often become wary as a result of hunting pressure, I know of no evidence that suggests anything more than individual wariness as a result of negative interaction with humans. I believe that the integrity of the social system of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, as evidenced by numerous historical reports of movement in pairs and family groups, vocal chatter, and exchange of double raps, would remain if the species has survived.
...
I thank J. Zickefoose, D. Sibley, J. Acorn, N. Snyder, W. E. Davis, J. Kricher, C. Elphick, L. Bevier, N. Tanner, and my wife, Bette, for helpful comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript.

Jackson also notes that Brazilian ornithologists A. Nemesio and M. Rodrigues have published a note with this translated title: "Rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker: Where is the scientific method?"; Atualidades Ornitológicas 125:14.

Congressional Briefing

A new Ivory-bill update from the US Fish and Wildlife Service is available here (PDF format).

There's not much new information (but there is another good picture of a guy in a ghillie suit).

Under the heading "Congressional Briefing", it says this:

Briefings were held this fall for staff members of the Senate and House Interior Appropriations Subcommittees. Additional briefings for staff members from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the House Resources Committee took place in mid-January.

"Highly commendable" efforts

Phil Tongier writes:

The "Hidden Problems of Expectation and Suggestion" are very much on point here.

In graduate school and law school we were continually immersed in Daubert et al.'s enigma. I am tempering my sarcasm a bit now when I realize how I would feel if I thought I'd seen a living specimen of Hoplodactylus delcourtii after studying that incredible creature for years in texts and then, after a few glimpses of a large gecko in a forest, couldn't produce more evidence.

In essence, Daubert et al's work may explain the problem without harming the egos of the observers (I hope). While I appreciate their undying optimism more these days and understand better their collective wish for this magnificent creature to exist I still stick to my arguement of "good evidence replicated" rather than "weak evidence sporadically reported" as any sort of standard. From the additional materials I've perused on Ivory Billed Woodpeckers I'd have to say that my 1%-10% belief that they exist in the continental United States is nearly zero. The Tanners', Allen, and Kellogg provided information that was internally consistent.

The current believers just cannot produce the requisite evidence. And to their greatest credit, it is not from a lack of trying. Indeed, if there were any more Northern Ivory Bills in existence the diligence put forth by the Pearl River team alone would have produced numerous pictures, if not film, discarded eggshells, or feathers. Their efforts have been noble. Their zeal outstanding. Their frailities human. And their perserverence has been incredible. They still could not, however, find definitive proof of a living Ivory Bill Woodpecker.

After all is said and done their efforts are highly commendable and it was a difficult undertaking.

Laura's "winter of discontent"

Here is a recent update from Laura Erickson, who has been exploring the White River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas.

In her post above, Laura provides a three-minute recording of the "dawn chorus", which she's titled "Cardinals and gunfire".

(Laura made some assumptions about local duck hunters that may not be accurate--to her credit, she has now posted someone's rebuttal here).

Aerial photo of "America's Amazon"

Cornell's "robust" Ivory-bill sightings all occurred in a tiny (4 square kilometer) area in a strip of habitat just south of 17 on this satellite photo. (Note that restaurants like McDonald's and Taco Bell are less than five miles away in Brinkley.)

As you can see by the scale on the map, that strip is roughly a mile or less in width! I think it's astonishing that people spin this as a vast, remote swamp, and that the press can actually call this "America's Amazon"...

"Open and aboveboard"

There is an article on the Ivory-bill search in today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (subscription may be required). The article says that this year's search is in "full view", as opposed to the secrecy of the past. Some excerpts (the bold font is mine):

A field technician from Michigan working on this year’s search for the bird posts her field journal online.

Could the author be referring to this "journal",
which has only one entry (from early November)?

“Everything is open and aboveboard,” Ken Rosenberg, director of conservation sciences at the Cornell laboratory, said in a recent interview about this year’s search. “I don’t think we have too many secrets this year.”

Rosenberg's view doesn't seem consistent with these words from the Birdchick, an official Cornell searcher.

Back to today's Democrat-Gazette article:

“We need to locate the bird, locate a roost,” said Connie Bruce, a spokesman for the Cornell Lab said. “We’re scientists, so there has to be evidence.”

If a photograph or video evidence of the bird is obtained, such information would be made public, Bruce said. “If there was any evidence we had to show the public and press, we’d be shouting it right now.”

"Hidden Problems of Expectation and Suggestion"

Someone emailed me this link to an intriguing paper. The title is "The Daubert/Kumho Implications of Observer Effects In Forensic Science: Hidden Problems of Expectation and Suggestion". Here's one paragraph:

An elementary principle of modern psychology is that the desires and expectations people possess influence their perceptions and interpretations of what they observe. In other words, the results of observation depend upon the state of the observer as well as the thing observed. This insight is not new; long before cognitive scientists began formally studying the psy-chological foundations of such effects, the phenomenon was noticed and commented upon. Julius Caesar, for instance, noted that “men generally believe quite freely that which they want to be true.

The paper is also available as a Word document here.

Kaufman on size judgments in the field

Kenn Kaufman writes this on page 7 of his book "Advanced Birding" (the bold font is mine):

Although size is often quoted as a field mark, it can be a difficult one to use. I used to believe I could judge any bird's size quickly in the field, but I now think that what was happening was that shape and behavior told me what species the bird was, and my mind automatically filled in the known size. In traveling outside North America I find that my first impression of the size of an unfamiliar bird may be grossly incorrect. If you are looking at an unknown bird, do not make assumptions about its size unless you see it in direct comparison to something else.