Brinkley embraces the Lord God Bird

I just listened to this 13-minute NPR segment for the first time. The segment is dated July 6, 2005.

To me, one year later, it's quite a sad story.

While I was away--off topic

I participated in a very enjoyable Minnesota Big Day this past week. Some details are here.

The rapid path to publication

Discussed here.

Some common ground with Cyberthrush

Regarding roost/nest holes, Cyberthrush has posted this (earlier, I had posted this).

(By the way, as I post this, there is a Pileated Woodpecker calling and flaking pieces of bark from the dead tree that is nine paces from my office window).

Some WorldTwitch updates

Here.

Reading list

Over the past year, a surprising number of people have emailed me book suggestions.

I've now read all three books below, and I highly recommend each of them to anyone interested in this whole Ivory-bill saga:

1. Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud, by Robert L. Park.

Mentioned on this blog here.

2. How We Know What Isn't So, by Thomas Gilovich

3. Intuition, by Allegra Goodman.

Mentioned on this blog here.

An isolated population of abnormal Pileateds

A commenter recently wrote:

I, for one, firmly believe that the existence of abnormal Pileateds is not necessary for either the sightings or the video.

I agree that it's not necessary. However, I'd make two points:

1. We've got a bunch of observers, not all of them inexperienced, who get fleeting glimpses of birds that seem to look a whole lot like Pileateds, but seem to have too much white on the wings. These sightings are concentrated in the Cache River area.

2. We've got an admission from Cornell team member Jim Bednarz that there just happens to be an isolated population of Pileated Woodpeckers in the Cache River area that have an uncharacteristic amount of white on their wings.

None of us may ever know what the observers actually saw.

To me, given the evidence, it makes complete sense that any given observer may have glimpsed one of the abnormal Pileateds known to be in the area, rather than one of the normal Pileateds.

Some text from this link:

Arkansas State University professor of wildlife ecology Jim Bednarz has seen several pileated woodpeckers with an abnormal amount of white wing feathers in the Cache River refuge. With Team Elvis, he pursued three birds that showed a flash of white in flight and white on their backs as they were perched. All were pileated.
....
Bednarz ... believes there is an isolated population of pileated woodpeckers in the Cache river bottoms who have an uncharacteristic amount of white on their wing feathers...