Trailer for "A Lost Bird Found"

1. Check out the trailer for "A Lost Bird Found" here.

Dennis Widner, manager of the Cache River NWR, makes a key point--a lot of the hunters and traditional users of the area are closet birders; they carry a camera because they want to get that million dollar shot.

This underscores a point suggested earlier--last fall in particular, hunters represented a truly massive unofficial "search effort" in Arkansas, and their complete failure to capture the "million dollar shot" speaks volumes.

The Birdchaser's view

Here.

Willie Hill's perspective

Here.

More from Willy Zimmer

Here.

The article suggests that skeptics believe the Luneau bird is an "abnormal pileated woodpecker". Personally, since late August 2005, I've said that the Luneau bird is likely to be a normal Pileated Woodpecker. This post (about Cornell misinterpreting out-of-focus vegetation as a perched Ivory-bill) came a few days later.

You may remember Zimmer from this posting last month. Note some good comments on Zimmer's own blog posting here.

Another national Ivory-bill hysteria begins to fade

Gradually, over the next couple of years, I predict that the mainstream media and the general public will essentially abandon the "Ivory-bill rediscovery" story, and organizations like the USFWS/Aububon/The Nature Conservancy/etc will abandon it too. (The Birdforum/Lunatic Fringe crowd will continue to find tantalizing Ivory-bill evidence far into the future).

The chronology of United States Ivory-bill claims here provides some useful historical perspective.

The last major Ivory-bill hysteria in this country occurred in a few years surrounding 1970. In those years, we had the Dennis/Big Thicket (Texas) Ivory-bill excitement, the Agey/Heinzmann claims (Florida), the Lowery photos (Louisiana), and the Santee (South Carolina) claims. I don't think the chronological clustering of those high-profile events is any coincidence--recent, "credible" Ivory-bill reports no doubt inspired other Ivory-bill searchers to get far too enthusiastic when any sort of weak "evidence" was found.

I think it's interesting that following the early 1970s, a good quarter-century evidently passed without truly massive excitement about purported Ivory-bills in the US. By the mid-1970s, I think it's likely that interested people had a belly-full of recent, high-profile Ivory-bill "false dawns", and with that mindset, the usual fleeting glimpses and double-knockies just weren't very exciting any more.

By 1999, I think enough time had passed that our collective "false dawn" memories had faded somewhat. Thus, starting in 1999, Kulivan begat the 2002 Pearl River search, which begat Cornell/Arkansas in 2004, which begat Auburn/Florida in 2005.

By now, I think people are again getting a belly-full of false dawns. When upcoming search seasons in Florida (and everywhere else) yield more goose eggs (and deer bleats, and maybe branch stubs), an ever-larger proportion of the public will tune out.

In some ways, I think periods of "Ivory-bill hysteria" can be compared to some historical financial hysterias (ie bubbles). Both types of hysteria can last a long time, but when they finally burst, it's in the collective memory for a long time, and the hysterical peaks are not reached again soon (if ever).

After this current Ivory-bill hysteria fades into the rear-view mirror, I think we'll be facing a very long period of general public/media disinterest in flimsy Ivory-bill rediscovery claims. Two or three decades from now, maybe the general public will once again be ready for another round of belief.

More from John Arvin

Here.

Don Hendershot's latest article

Here.

I think this might be a good time to point out just how lousy Hill's sightings really were. These were brief, naked eye views of flying birds with very few details actually seen. No wing noise was noted.

The full field notes are here, but here are some excerpts (the bold font is mine):

Sighting: 5 January 2006 by Geoff Hill Transcribed from notes written immediately after sighting We left camp (Beavertown) at about 0610 and floated out to the [LOCATION WITHHELD] and then up and out to the Choct. We then floated down and up into [location withheld]. About 10 min into our paddle up [LOCATION WITHHELD] I saw a bird with a wingspan greater than a Wood Duck fly over my head and away from me. The time was 0638. The bird was not exactly like anything I’ve seen before. It reminded me of a small loon. It had a long neck and long tail. Wingbeats seemed rather stiff and shallow. Chet mentioned that it seemed too small for a cormorant. I agree that it definitely was not a cormorant but the stiff wingbeats were reminiscent of a cormorant. In the early morning light I could see no coloration. It was certainly not a duck of any species, not an anhinga, not a cormorant, not a heron. I am rather confident that it was an ivorybill. It flew at tree-top level over my head and dead straight away. It was in view for about 2 seconds.

Sighting: 21 January 2006 by Geoff Hill Time: 0955 Notes and drawing made immediately after sighting. Notes transcribed from handwritten originals. Naked-eye view. Bird flushed from about 30 feet (10 m) as I was moving noisily through a flooded tupelo/cypress stand. It came off a tree trunk about 3 to 5 feet from the water. I never saw it perched. Flight was strong and fast. It seemed not to need many wingbeats to cover the first 100 feet. It made no sound at all as it flew. With naked eye and the bird flying away I saw few details: jet black except wide striking white band on trailing edge of wings. It looked larger and longer-winged than a pileated. It flew about 300 feet and landed in a distant tree. I could see it going in to land but it disappeared completely from view as it did so. About 1 min later, just as I turned my video camera on, I heard a second bird from my right knock and then double knock. I may have captured this on tape. I did not detect either bird again.

The IBWO and Texas

Check out the links that Cyberthrush posted here.

Jeff Wells and the IBWO

Article here.

Disconnect between ivorybill.org and cornell.edu

Note that the banner at the ivorybill.org (Big Woods Conservation Partnership) web site still proudly features an old picture of an Ivory-bill overlayed with "found!' text.

Meanwhile, at the Cornell Ivory-bill site, we see a similar picture with different text overlayed--"THE SEARCH FOR THE IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER". (I've been told that in the past, the Cornell site also had the "found!" text).

Note that the "Detailed analysis of Luneau video" link at ivorybill.org (bottom middle of the page), is currently broken. The breakage evidently occured when Cornell moved this analysis from a subdirectory named "rediscovery" to a subdirectory named "evidence".

However, Cornell is still selling "found!" caps here.

More links

1. Someone linked to this article from the comment section. An excerpt (the bold font is mine):

[Mike] Collins, who has recorded 12 sightings in the past year, intends to return in the winter, after hunting season, when the forest is still.

2. Duck hunters saved the Ivory-bill?

A reader points out "A Lost Bird Found", a show currently running on VS (formerly OLN). From the VS website:

It's long been known that conservation efforts benefit all species, and nowhere is that more clear than the Big Woods of Arkansas. Duck hunters saved the Cache River refuge back in the 1970s, and now it's the site of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker (once thought to be extinct) rediscovery. Wade gets the story on Wood Ducks, and Woodpeckers.

3. More from The Huntsville Times here.