April '05 press conference videos still available

I was surprised to find that the April '05 Ivory-bill press conference videos are still available online--link available here.

Watch them while you can--it seems likely that they will quietly disappear from the internet at some point.

It looks like only the Gale Norton portion of that press conference is now available here.

I wrote about the Fitz video here.

Baltimore Sun article

Here.

It's a good one--I recommend that you carefully read the whole thing.

Yet another ID error story

From Laura Erickson here.

An excerpt:

I was counting dickey birds up the shore from Duluth one fine autumn morning when a birding friend ran up and told me a Yellow-billed Loon had been sighted at Brighton Beach in Duluth, slowly working its way northeast along the shore. She and I jumped in the car and stopped at each pullout along the way, searching for it. At our second stop, we came upon two other birders who were searching for it. We represented four of Duluth's "best" birders, and we all had good spotting scopes. And voila! There was the bird, swimming and diving quite a distance from shore, but we all got good looks and were jumping and celebrating when suddenly it occurred to me that something wasn't quite right. And when I looked again, our Yellow-billed Loon turned out to be an immature Double-crested Cormorant. Everyone was mortified. And the other three were so upset that they begged the group to NEVER tell anyone our mistake!! So I never gave their names out...

Another possible Ivory-bill picture from Fishcrow

Here.

I agree that Fishcrow's latest picture meets the quality standard established by Cornell's six-pixel Ivory-bill.

These ridiculous pictures help illustrate an important point--for some people, a fleeting glimpse of almost anything may qualify as a possible Ivory-bill sighting.

Why did Prum and Robbins withdraw their paper?

About a year later, I'm still somewhat stunned at the inexplicable Prum and Robbins quotes here.

My thoughts at the time are here.

Would any of you (anonymous?) folks care to share your thoughts on the "real story" of Prum and Robbins withdrawing the paper (while Jerome Jackson was out of the country)?

Double raps heard!

Here.

An excerpt:

Just thought I'd pass this along. In a conversation with Don Carrell, one of the other participants in the Texas IBWO search, he related to me a recent incident in which he had heard a series of double raps at close range. When the maker of the sounds showed itself it was...drum roll please...a Pileated Woodpecker. Don is more optimistic than I about the existence of IBWOs and I have no reason to doubt him on this.

"Exactly zip to show for it"

Here.

Just a reminder--back in May, Cornell said this:

A final report on the 2005-06 ivory-bill search will be issued later this summer.

A couple of other "Ivory-bill" threads

Here and here.

"Stubbornly boneheaded"

Here.

Update 1: Related discussion at Birdforum here.

Update 2: In a post entitled "Boneheaded groupthink", Laura Erickson endorses Cyberthrush's 13 points here.