Ivory-bill recovery planning

Here is an article about the work of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Recovery Team.

Cornell fooled by vegetation again

I've been doing some more Luneau video analysis, and I just noticed what appears to be another massive error on Cornell's part.

At this link, I watched the second, magnified clip.

Note the black, nearly vertical smudge labeled "D" in the picture below (you can use the Luneau bird "A" to orient yourself; please ignore points B, C, and E for now).


Twenty-three frames after the above screen capture, the Luneau bird aligns with the smudge labeled "D", so that Cornell "saw" a black head and tail that resulted in the incorrect sketch below (from Figure 2 of their Science paper).


I think the sketch above is a complete misinterpretation of our view of the Luneau bird. The sketch shows a "high-angle" view of the back and both upperwings of the Luneau bird; in reality, we basically have a "rear-view". We are looking at both underwings of the bird (with wings below horizontal).

I'm completely unconvinced that we have a view of the bird's back from this angle, and I think we have no evidence that the Luneau bird had white dorsal stripes.

"Outside" magazine article

The March 2006 edition of Outside magazine contains a lengthy article on the claimed Ivory-billed woodpecker rediscovery. Including illustrations, the article is spread over parts of seven pages. Below are some excerpts (the bold font is mine):

Within four weeks of identifying the unextinct bird, Sparling had shuttered his stable, where he'd been running a horseback-riding business, and turned his attention to ivorybill stalking full-time.
...
"I was familiar with the legend of the ivorybill," says Sparling, who speaks with a richly seasoned raconteurial drawl. "As a young man, I fantasized at great length of traveling to the Big Thicket, in Texas, finding a lost colony of ivorybills, and photographing them." Even so, his jubilation at seeing the bird was marbled with pure terror. A wayfaring, neo-beatnik entrepreneur whose resume includes a failed Baja whale-watching concern and an abandoned shiitake mushroom operation, Sparling was wary of a public drubbing: "I thought, Oh, shit. Here I am, a guy with no education, no formal training, saying he'd seen an ivorybill. I expected everybody to say, 'Sparling, you idiot, you moron, you're delusional.'"
...
"To be honest," he [Sparling] added, "I have somewhat let go of the need to see the bird again myself. Seeing it's not nearly as important as restoring the habitat..."
...
[quoting Sparling again] "It's amazing: Here you've got what's probably the rarest bird in the world, regularly flying over I-40," He shrugged and paddled on. "Sure hope he's flying high."

In this entire article, the only mention of the Ivory-bill controversy is this single sentence:

In July 2005, when a trio of rival scientists threatened to mount a challenge to the findings, the audio captures convinced the skeptics.

Luneau quotes Roosevelt

On his website, David Luneau now quotes Theodore Roosevelt like this:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly.

According to this, Roosevelt immediately went on to say:

...who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

In my opinion, Cornell's recent effort to obtain definitive Ivory-bill proof has been undeniably valiant, but clearly a failure.

More analysis of the Luneau video

An anonymous contributor sent me this excellent analysis:

Attached is a comparison of some images from the recent Cornell website defending the identification of Luneau's video as IBWO. First is the image they themselves posted on the website to show how "unlike" the underwing patterns of the Luneau bird and confirmed Pileated are. Note the extensive black on the trailing edges of the PIWO wing. Also note that they are all flying in an angle perpendicular to the viewer, whereas the Luneau bird is flying directly away.

Below the black stripe, I have added comparisons of some screencaptures of frames from the videos posted by Cornell of confirmed PIWOs flying away from the viewer. Somehow, the video analyst wizzes at Cornell seem to have overlooked that these images are much more like those in the Luneau video in the direction of flight... and, amazingly, they are also more similar in overall pattern! Huh. Well, nevermind, if you just overlook that minor detail, you'll see why Luneau's bird is still clearly so different from a PIWO. Right?

(Click to enlarge)

Comment from Cornell on DNA testing

Here's a BirdForum post from Cyberthrush (the bold font is mine):

Since the question of looking for DNA evidence of Ivory-bill presence keeps popping up I asked Cornell directly what if anything was going on in that regard. Here's the pertinent part of the response I received, for those interested:

"... It is possible to make a positive ID by using DNA markers and we have been doing this, pulling feathers from scalings and testing them for DNA. In all cases, the feathers were from Pileated Woodpeckers. Extracting DNA in any other way, like saliva or foot prints, as you suspect, would not be possible.
One thing that has been discussed is to use a DNA vac to pull up material from the floor of a cavity. However, in order for this to be a reasonable thing to do, we'd have to have identified cavities that were quite likely otherwise this would not be in the least cost efficient."

From the ABA Checklist chairman

Earlier today, the comment below was submitted regarding this post:

Hi Tom,

I'm the chairman of the American Birding Association Checklist Committee (CLC), which you mentioned on your site. With the Fitzpatrick et al. (2005) paper published in _Science_, we have sufficient information to vote on the claim that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is not extinct.

However, some members of the CLC feel that the evidence provided in the paper is open to interpretation, as you and several others have noted.

Additionally, Cornell reportedly has gathered additional data that have not yet been published.

Given that at this moment, the Cornell search team is in its third season looking for Ivory-billeds, the ABA CLC has decided to wait until the end of this season to vote on the matter, in the hopes that additional proof can be gathered to support the claim that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker survives.

We are also awaiting the publication of one or more rebuttals to the Fitzpatrick et al. (2005) _Science_ paper, which are rumored to be in press or in preparation.

You're probably aware that Jerry Jackson has just published his rebuttal in the current edition of the _Auk_; his paper can be read here: http://www.aou.org/persp1231.pdf.


Best regards,

Bill Pranty
Bayonet Point, Florida
ABA Checklist chair

Even more from WorldTwitch

The WorldTwitch Ivory-bill page has again been updated.

Updated list of public skeptics

I just updated my list of public Ivory-bill skeptics.

I've added some new names, some links to biographical information, and also some links to articles quoting the listed people.

The Heinzman/Agey feather

Check this out:

...JJackson noted a while ago that one of the ivory-bills in the museum's collection was missing the exact same inner secondary as the feather supposedly recovered by Heinzman/Agey...

More from WorldTwitch

John Wall of WorldTwitch pulls no punches in a one-paragraph "Ivory-billed Woodpecker update" currently posted here. More of his current thoughts on the subject are here.

Please note once again that those are his words, not mine.

More on searches in other states

Some excerpts from an article in yesterday's Augusta Chronicle (subscription may be required; the bold font is mine):

If a bird thought to be extinct for six decades can turn up alive and well in the dense swamps of Arkansas, then why not South Carolina or Georgia?
...
"We've designed a search that will enable us to have six two-person crews on the ground at any given time," said wildlife biologist Jennifer Koches of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's field office in Charleston, S.C.
...
Last summer, however, ornithologists led by a team from Cornell University documented a small group of ivory-bills living within the 56,000-acre Cache River wildlife refuge of Arkansas.
...
The Fish & Wildlife Service will use about $75,000 in grants to buy cameras and audio recording gear that volunteers - who are being trained by Cornell ornithologists - will take into the field.
...
Funds for the search are part of a broader program in which states where the bird once lived can seek federal assistance for reconnaissance programs. So far, Texas, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia have applied.

Skeptical review of "The Grail Bird"

Of twenty "Grail Bird" reviews on Amazon.com, Stan Moore's on 2/10/06 is the first skeptical one.

I encourage you to read Stan's review, and I encourage you to vote on the "Was this review helpful to you?" question at the end.