It's obvious that some folks still don't realize just how flimsy the Choctawhatchee audio evidence is.
If you're serious about birding by ear, you should get some headphones and carefully listen to real Ivory-bill vocalizations here, then compare them to a March 18 Choctawhatchee "Ivory-bill" here.
This is not a good match. A recent commenter suggested that a number of the Choctawhatchee "birds" sound more like a bicycle braking than an Ivory-bill kent, and I agree.
Note also the very strange pattern of the "Ivory-bill" sounds listed here. A relatively large number of alleged Ivory-bill kents (mostly single sounds) occurred during a week (March 13-20) when zero double-knocks were recorded. On the other hand, during the entire month of January, alleged Ivory-bill kent calls were recorded on only three occasions, while alleged Ivory-bill double-knocks were recorded on 32 occasions. If Ivory-bills are in the area, none of this makes the slightest bit of sense.
The bottom line is that if you collect enough sound data in any forest in America, a whole lot of tapping, tooting and squeaking should be expected.
A partial list of possible "kent-like call" sources might include:
1. Blue Jays
2. White-tailed Deer
3. Great Blue Herons
4. Common Moorhens
5. American Coots
6. Gray Squirrels
7. Red-breasted Nuthatches
8. White-breasted Nuthatches
9. Northern Flickers
10. Wild Turkeys
11. Sandhill Cranes
12. Red-winged Blackbirds
13. Common Grackles
14. Snow Geese
15. Spring Peepers
16. A duck hunter's blue-winged teal call
17. Someone blowing through the mouthpiece of a clarinet
18. Someone playing an old IBWO tape
19. Bicycle, ATV, or truck brakes
20. Tree branches or stems rubbing together
21. A distant oil well
A partial list of possible "double-knock" sources might include:
1. Pileated Woodpeckers
2. Red-bellied Woodpeckers
3. Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers
4. Gadwall wings
5. Mallard wings
6. A crow breaking open a nut
7. Tree branches clashing together
8. Distant vehicles on rough roads
9. Gunshots
10.Any number of other possible mechanical sources
Some supporting links are here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
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24 comments:
"The bottom line is that if you collect enough sound data in any forest in America, a whole lot of tapping, tooting and squeaking should be expected."
Yup. And if you take 10,000 hours of sound recordings made in that forest and "search" those recordings for "matches" to [insert your favorite sound here] you'll find some "interesting" moments, especially when those moments are played back to a listener whose expectations of what they are going to hear are already tweaked.
Remember when Judas Priest was put on trial for allegedly inserting a "subliminal" message ("Do it") into their song, which could only be heard when played backwards? As part of their defense, they showed that you could hear just about any "subliminal message" you wanted to hear, and then showed the courtroom where one of their songs played backwards said (I'm paraphrasing from memory) "Candy lollipops are a tasty treat."
When we're dealing with sounds as rudimentary as "kent calls" and "double-knocks," it's no surprise that they are found virtually anywhere if you look hard enough.
As has been noted here inumerable times, such facts do not make an extinct bird any less extinct. The failure to squarely address such facts by the believers, however, is additional evidence that certain IBWO believers are unscientific hype-peddling charlatans.
Tom,
Much of your list has already been ruled out as possibilities for the Choctawhatchee audio by context, I don’t see a need to go over this again. Others on your list are birds not likely to be present. Yes, I realize IBWO is unlikely to be present, but why limit your list to unlikely North American birds? If you’re going to include out of range species there’s no sense letting an ocean or two get in your way.
The irony is this…the longer you make your list, the more inexplicable it is that you cannot produce an audio file that is a good match. That is: a single note, heard in context, that sounds to the ear like a Mennill toot. I’ve previously suggested March 24.
pd
"Others on your list are birds not likely to be present."
It's nearly impossible to believe that this objection was seriously raised.
Then again, the person who wrote the quoted statement once bet someone here $1000 that the IBWO would be proved non-extinct by Fall of 2008.
Yes, just make it stop!!
I agree with a anon comment on an earlier post. I just want this to stop. I would love if it stopped with a good photo but that doesn't appear likely and it is certainly not going to stop with a random noise in the woods.
This entire fiasco was interesting for a few months but it has run it's course. People slow down to look at wrecks on the highway but they don't stop and camp out next to it for a year to see who was hurt and how badly.
Why don't the searchers take a pledge that nothing is said to anyone until a good photo is obtained? Would that be so hard? Didn't CLO have a number of people maintain their silence? Can't the searchers make it clear that anyone like Fishcrow who makes a mockery out of science and human intelligence will be ostracized for saying absurd things about the IBWO being on multiple state lists? If they can't then they have no reason to criticize skeptics for thinking it is all a bad, long, and now very boring, joke.
PD,
Ok, just to humor you, I listened again to the last alleged IBWO kent from March 24. It's here .
To me, listening closely with headphones, that sound is a better match for a bicycle brake sound (available as the last note here ) than it is for any known Ivory-bill kent.
Of course, the sound of a bicycle brake could vary with make and model of the brake and rim, humidity, speed and weight of the rider, etc.
Now it's your turn. Please provide a known IBWO kent that's a better match. Please also provide your thoughts on why the "Ivory-bills" are inexplicably mostly providing one-note kent sequences, why they chose to kent without double-rapping for an entire week, etc.
Pd has a dog in the hunt. So he's no longer impartial. He's like Gallagher. In for a penny...in for a pound. Emotionally they can't stop now.
And Pd's wife wants to know why they can't go on that $1000 vacation next year.
Whoa Tom, one thing at a time…
First off, you win…hands down! After four months I see you’ve settled on bicycle brakes as best match. I can’t possibly top that. Bicycle brakes it is then! My question has been answered fully to my satisfaction. Thank you.
pd
pd,
Which of the animals on this list would not be present in a Florida swamp in Winter. The Snow Goose might be hard but not impossible. Beyond that it seems reasonable to me.
Does anyone know where the closest Christmas Count is? I'd like to look at the historical results.
Tom had some specific questions which I’ll get to later but first a comment on this claim…
“The bottom line is that if you collect enough sound data in any forest in America, a whole lot of tapping, tooting and squeaking should be expected.”
Not exactly, and for reasons Tom himself has cited …even Choctawhatchee did not produce just “a whole lot of tooting”. It produced a specific kind of toot within a narrow range. Tom points out that the duration of toots was consistently about a tenth of a second longer than the duration of known IBWO toots. Mennill targeted one specific duration and he got a different specific duration. He didn’t get a shot-gun smattering of durations. None were within the single recorded IBWO duration and none shorter. All were about a tenth longer. This suggests he didn’t have a laundry list of sources. He probably had only one source and if he had more than one source they were indistinguishable from one another in terms of duration or other measures I am aware of. So if this one source (or very few sources) had not been present, the forest would produce no toots.
These are not random sounds generated by random forest activity. They are the sounds of one or two diurnal animals, which (given 210 recordings) should be easy to identify by birders with good ears. Without these specific species present, the sounds would be absent.
pd
Now back to Tom’s questions about why toots are single toots and not always recorded at the same time as double knocks. It’s a good question and I said so myself several months ago:
“…there is little to establish that toots and taps have the same source. They seem to be distinct activities, and may have distinct sources. Taps often start at or a bit before sunrise. Toots start after sunrise. Both end well before sunset.”
So Tom, I don’t know, but it’s easy to guess…. We know multiple toots were made at roostholes. We also know single toots were produced when foraging on rotten bug infested wood. Double knocks were presumably communications made from hard woods. Let’s imagine that single toots communicate, “I’m eating, food here”, and double knocks communicate, “I’ve checked this one out, no food here”. Something like this could easily explain the Mennill chronology. Countless such scenarios could be imagined. Yes, imagined.
pd
By the way, CBC results are easy to find on the web. Both nuthatches and the sandhill crane would be out of range based on CBC and other records. Aside from the blue jay, I think the nuthatch and crane have been the most often cited possibilities on this blog.
"...They are the sounds of one or two diurnal animals..."
1. How do you know that these sounds were even produced by animals, rather than mechanical sources such as bicycle brakes, tree branches rubbing together, etc?
2. How do you know that Mennill's ARUs didn't record kent-like sounds at night? I specifically asked Mennill about this via email a couple of months ago, and he has not yet replied.
"...It produced a specific kind of toot within a narrow range..."
No, I think Mennill cherry-picked these specific toots because they sorta-kinda sounded intriguing. You don't think the ARUs picked up a whole lot of other toots that didn't even make Mennill's very liberal cut?
By the way, CBC results are easy to find on the web. Both nuthatches and the sandhill crane would be out of range based on CBC
The CBC? It's not reliable.
The sand hill crane regularly flies over this river system. And rests and feeds in adjacent fields. It is to be expected often. Nuthatches? Yes, they are present.
Here's a question. The Great-tailed Grackle makes a great double and single toot. Every time I hear it (often), I smile at the thought of IBWO.
Do boat-tailed grackles in Florida make this sound?
amy lester said [i](I'm paraphrasing from memory) "Candy lollipops are a tasty treat."[/i]
Actually I think it was something about "peppermints" but you are spot-on. If you are pre-warned what you are about to hear, then you are much more likely to hear it.
Interestingly, one of the guys who shot himself in the head with a shotgun in response to Juadas Priest's 'subliminal messages' managed not to kill himself!
Are you suggesting that people who believe in the 'toots' are of similar intellect?
Stevev
Sure, I’ll call the bluff of the anonymous who insists the fields of the Choctawhatchee are frequented by cranes but doesn’t know what a boat-tailed grackle sounds like…both sandhill cranes and white breasted nuthatches would be rarities along the Choctawhatchee river. Please cite your source if you have information to the contrary.
In answer to Tom’s questions…I believe Mennill recorded 24 hours a day, first because he says so, and second because of what I mentioned above… “Taps often start at or a bit before sunrise. Toots start after sunrise. Both end well before sunset.” It make no sense that Mennill would have stopped “cherry picking” an hour before sunset each day.
I’m not sure why Tom has taken a sudden interest in mechanical sounds unless he’s lost confidence in animal sounds. Any given mechanical sound would have its own likely occurrence pattern on a twenty-four hour schedule, as well as a seven day schedule. I can’t imagine a mechanical noise that would avoid sunsets for example, and also cluster for a couple mornings here, and a couple afternoons there, without regard for weekends. Wind, traffic, farm activity, domestic activity, construction activity, recreational activity; none are likely to follow the chronology of toots or taps.
I would suggest that diurnal animals moving in and out of areas in search of changing food supplies fits quite well.
pd
...I believe Mennill recorded 24 hours a day...
Yes, I also believe he recorded 24 hours a day. I don't believe that he had his staff carefully look for toots and taps in all that data between sunset and sunrise each calendar day. If that was done, I think they would have found more than a few toots and taps occurring in the dark. This would have presented a serious problem in selling this conglomeration of sounds as evidence of "Ivory-bills".
Regarding the chronology, it may (or may not) be worth mentioning that the very first large conglomeration of bicycle-like sounds happened to fall on a nice Saturday morning (March 18), stopping around lunchtime...
Wednesdays did as well as Saturdays for toots, and Sundays were the big losers. The kents show no regard one way or the other for weekends.
pd
Yes or no, PD: Do you think that Mennill's results reflect a fair analysis of all 24 hours of each calendar day's sound data?
Again, as a reminder, I'm asking for a yes or no answer here.
Yes. I believe that Mennill's results reflect a fair analysis of all 24 hours of each calendar day's sound data. I say this because I’m inclined to believe he’s honest and curious. I think we both would agree that that is what an honest and curious person would do. I’m also persuaded by the presence of some recordings before sunrise, paired with the complete absence of recordings an hour before sunset. Only a very, very, dishonest person would be so clever.
pd
Pd,
Sandhill cranes fly over the area regularly and sit in the adjacent fields.
Red Breasted nuthatches are regular but scarce compared to more northern climes.
Have you even been there, Pd?
We understand that you are getting frustrated. But this is the bed you chose. So you will just have to live with it. But be fair. You need to speak from experience. Can you?
I say this because I’m inclined to believe he’s honest and curious
Pd, Hillcrow and Mennill aren't even honest with themselves much less with the public.
They say they do not have definitive proof and then they turn around and say that they have heard IBWO 41 times and had numerous sightings.
They don't say possible sounds or possible sightings. So which is it?
Honesty precludes self-delusion.
Only a very, very, dishonest person would be so clever.
There's a fine line between clever and stupid and, unfortunately for everyone, Mennill is not on the clever side of that line.
But that's the essence of IBWO peddling: you don't need to be clever. You only need to create confusion by throwing out worthless data and asserting that it's "interesting" or "consistent with IBWOs in the area." That's enough to satisfy the rubes until the next "tantalizing" pile of garbage is unearthed.
Keep digging, Amy... you'll get there eventually.
Keep digging, Amy... you'll get there eventually.
I'll get to China, maybe, where instead of IBWO charlatans they've got folks who believe that powdered rhino horns can cure impotence.
And then I'll turn around and dig back. Maybe I'll find the underground city where the Sasquatch manufacture and control their ESP lasers.
"And then I'll turn around and dig back. Maybe I'll find the underground city where the Sasquatch manufacture and control their ESP lasers."
When you reach the underground city you may find the Mole People there too!
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