Cuban Ivory-bill hunt

According to this article, an Ivory-bill search has begun in Cuba.

A couple of snippets (the bold font is mine):

"I believe the bird is here," said Arturo Kirkconnell, co-author of the Field Guide to the Birds of Cuba and one of the island's top researchers. "We have a chance now to go to areas never visited before. The habitat is ideal, and there has been no evidence that the woodpecker is not there."
...
Eduardo Inigo-Elias, an ornithologist at Cornell University, which is heading the Arkansas search, said Cuba has less acreage suitable for the woodpecker than does the United States. Still, said Inigo-Elias, "Cuba does have 600 protected areas, and we are happy they are looking for it.

In a related note, here is what Martjan Lammertink wrote in 1995. An excerpt (the bold font is mine):

In 1986 the re-discovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Campephilus principalis, in eastern Cuba attracted world-wide attention. In March that year Cuban biologists found the species in a hilly pine forest called Ojito de Agua. At the same site two C. principalis were seen by an international team in April 1986. Ojito de Agua immediately became a protected area. The willingness of the Cuban authorities to co-operate and the expectation that more birds could be found in other areas raised the hope that C. principalis could be saved. However, after two extensive expeditions in 1991 and 1993, it has become clear that the birds found in 1986 were in dire circumstances and no other suitable areas for C. principalis could be found. The conclusion must be that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, C. principalis, had become extinct by 1990.

Hoaxes in ornithology

Interesting ID-Frontiers post here.

Ray Brown still believes

This article says that self-described "casual birder" (and radio talk show host) Ray Brown still believes.

Here's a snippet:

[Brown's] show features interviews with such guests as Tim Gallagher, one of the birders who may have rediscovered the ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird long thought extinct. ''Talkin' Birds" has also addressed the controversy of that sighting, one in which Brown believes.

''These guys are experts," says Brown. Although skeptics say the so-called ivory-billed woodpecker was actually the more common pileated woodpecker, Brown disagrees. ''They've probably seen 5,000 pileated woodpeckers. When they saw this bird they almost fell out of their canoe. They were crying afterward."

"We're encouraged"

Is this satire?

Fading euphoria

Jim Fitzpatrick is slated to talk about the Ivory-bill on May 19 at the Detroit Lakes (MN) Festival of Birds.

There is a little blurb about Jim's talk here (PDF format). One sentence from the blurb:

While no recent film or digital pictures of the subject bird yet exist, documentation of the search areas, processes and sighting spots and a grainy video of the bird will highlight the reason for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s recent declaration that the Ivory Billed woodpecker is alive in the Arkansas delta.

I think it's notable that this alleged ornithological miracle now merits only a short Friday afternoon slot at this multi-day birding festival.

A Whale of a Tale

Alex Sanders was a key figure in what many believe to be an Ivory-bill hoax in South Carolina in 1971.

At this blog posting, there's a link to a remarkable recent 19-minute speech (WMA format) by Alex Sanders. In this speech, Sanders describes how an "Ivory-bill" was miraculously heard just exactly when needed to suit his purposes.

(Near the end of this talk, Sanders relates the old "Ivory-bill that wrecked Alexander Wilson's room" story in a way quite different from this version).

Photo manipulation

To some people, Cornell's Figure 1B (see below) seemed to be convincing evidence that the Luneau bird is an Ivory-bill. A commenter on my blog said this (the bold font is mine):

If you also look at Cornell's view of that image, of the perched birds wing, where they use the specimen placed behind the tree, it's an exact match.

Cornell's Figure 1B was not, in fact, produced by photographing a specimen placed behind a tree. Cornell admits that this is montage of a specimen's wing superimposed behind a tupelo trunk.

Check out Sibley's Figure 1 (available here) and Fitzpatrick's Figure 1 (available here).

I see some big problems with Cornell's photo manipulation.

1. In Fitzpatrick's original interpretation of the Luneau bird's position (inset sketch in Sibley's Figure 1A above), the tree is shown leaning to the right. In Fitzpatrick's Figure 1B, near the "top" of the wing, the tree is now shown leaning to the left.

A cynic might suggest that the tree's structure was conveniently altered to "hide" much of the black anterior patch that would show up if an actual Ivory-bill was perched there.

2. A centerpiece of the believer's argument was that the Luneau bird was too large to be a Pileated, based on a crucial wrist-to-tailtip measurement derived from this very frame.

With the new tree structure in Fitzpatrick's 1B above, the wrist is hidden (and strangely, the tail is not even shown). How can you possibly defend any wrist-to-tailtip measurement in this scenario?!

3. Check out the odd angle used when photographing the specimen in Fitzpatrick 1C. A cynic might suggest that this specimen was deliberately photographed in closeup from a low angle (looking upward at the bird). Photographing the specimen this way might make the white wing patch look more extensive than it would from a more distant, more horizontal angle, as in the Luneau video.

4. I'm suspicious of the scale used when pasting a portion of the specimen wing onto the photograph of the tupelo (the wing looks too large). When pasting the wing portion onto the photograph, was the wing portion arbitrarily scaled to match Fitzpatrick 1A?

In my humble opinion, these photographic shenanigans are more evidence of Cornell's journey down the road to fraud.

Backing away

An excerpt from this article (the bold font is mine):

...In April 2005 it was announced that the ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird thought for decades to have been extinct, had been rediscovered in the similar habitat of the adjoining Cache River National Wildlife Refuge to the north. Many believe it is only a matter of more thorough searching before the bird will be confirmed in the larger White River refuge, where automatic recording devices have already captured calls that may have been that of the ivory-billed.

Larry Mallard, manager of the White River refuge, appreciates the flurry of publicity and the hopes for a tourism boom that have accompanied the rediscovery, but he also believes caution should be exercised given the woodpecker’s tenuous-at-best existence within the state. "What happens,"Mallard asks, "if Elvis leaves the building?" He is using the codename given to the ivory-billed while scientists conducted a secretive search to confirm its presence.

"This refuge is a remarkable place and worth experiencing whether or not the ivory-billed is living in it," Mallard said. "Fishermen and hunters have known for many years how special the refuge is," he continued, "and now birders and others have become more interested in it."

Texas IBWO volunteer orientation rescheduled

Details here.