An excerpt:
...I lived in the camp with Tyler Hicks, Geoff Hill, and the rest of the field crew, and now fully believe most of what gets reported. There were many occasions when I saw Pileateds fly by and wasn't able to get a photo, despite being ultra-ready: sometimes it's just not possible to react quickly enough. Other methods proposed include using infrared cameras to find roosting birds at night, using playback recordings of double knocks, walking a "skirmish line" toward stationary observers to flush the birds, and using helicopters to flush them above the forest canopy...A Noah Strycker here is described as a 2003 high school graduate. A Noah K. Strycker here is described as an Associate Editor of Birding magazine.
An excerpt from this link:
Noah K. Strycker, a regular contributor to Birder's World, studies fisheries and wildlife science at Oregon State University.
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5 comments:
...using playback recordings of double knocks...
Does this mean that they aren't using playback at all?
http://www.noahstrycker.com/aboutme.htm
In Veracruz Hill said they wouldn't use playback because they didn't want to disturb the birds.
They're OK with disturbing us, though.
I think "disturbing" the birds is fine if it is the best way to determine that there are birds to disturb. I suspect I'm as likely to disturb Ivory-bills by playing recordings in Geoff Hill's office, though. Or at Cornell.
Why don't these folks get it? Playback is the key! You can't protect what you can't detect. At this point, playback is necessary to allow us to see real evidence of the bird or to lay it to rest finally.
Maybe that's the problem: if they don't make an all-out effort to document the bird, they can continue this joke indefinitely, leading donors on with "well, we just missed getting *another* photo!"
My Two Cents
Dan Mennill had Pale-billed Woodpeckers (same genus, Campephilus) FLY into his location 50% of the time when he banged a stick on a log and imitated a double knock.
50%!!!!! of the time. Hello???? is anyone listening???? Now maybe the only kent calls recorded (during the Allen expedition) were calls that said in IBWO-ese "hey all you IBWOs in the vicinity, there are freaky guys here with weird equipment, fly away now! So playing back the recorded kent calls may drive birds away - it's possible. But if (in another Campephilus) double knocks bring birds in, shouldn't you be double knocking your ass off??? Screw this ARU recording crap, it WILL NOT be definitive. Get out your freakin' drum sticks and bam-bam on a board. I've done it and it sounds pretty damn close to other Campephilus recordings.
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