An excerpt:
It's like UFO sightings, only several orders of magnitudes less exciting.
David Viner Day
3 hours ago
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3 comments:
On Birdforum, Mike Johnston mentions an article by Noel Snyder quoting George Lowery. (I'd seen that quote but was unable to find it again.) I quote Mike below:
Just out of interest, in an article in Birder's World, Noel Snyder mentioned George Lowery's criteria for a possible IBWO sighting (Lowery being no sceptic):
He [Snyder] notes that past AOU president George Lowery proposed in his 1974 book Louisiana Birds three conditions for a large woodpecker sighting to be considered a possible Ivory-bill:
*Seeing the ivory-colored bill of the bird.
*Hearing the bird give typical nasal yamp calls.
*Seeing the extensive white on the bird's underwing produced mainly by the white secondary feathers.
"None of the Arkansas sightings fulfills all three criteria," says Snyder. "No one on the search team has evidently yet had a good look at the bill color of the bird(s) in question, and no one has seen a candidate Ivory-bill vocalizing. Also, Pileated Woodpeckers with white secondaries have been seen in the wild, so seeing a large woodpecker with white secondaries is hardly proof it is an Ivory-bill."
I think George Lowery's standards are extremely important. That's because there ARE aberrant pileated woodpeckers with white in the secondaries and/or on the lower back, there ARE other creatures that make kent-like calls, and the large ivory-colored bill is an important if not definitive field mark.
Lowery knew honest people made mistakes based on incomplete information.
To the best of my knowledge, in the current flap since and including Cornell's sightings, no one has reported all three conditions that George Lowery required for POSSIBLE sighting.
It will be interesting to see what happens if the robot captures something that _might_ be an IBWO but is less than ideal. The Believers will surely rejoice, but lacking context, will it really advance the cause?
Abount 50 years ago, some young buddies and I attended a convention of flying saucer Believers out in the Mojave Desert and gave them, at night of course, what appeared to be what they wanted to see. We also brought members of the national media to document everyone's silliness.
The credulous have a tough row to hoe if they expect to advance acceptance of their beliefs. I doubt remote untended robotics will help at all.
At least they're looking for life on earth and not wasting time and money in space. Now if they just need to look for EXTANT life on earth they might find something worthwhile.
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