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3 comments:
More second-rate journalism and ambiguously supportive or vaguely skeptical statements by the big shots.
Jackson continues to hope for no good reason, thereby helping to perpetuate a fiasco he did so much to create. Despite his article on faith-based article I believe that Jackson deserves much more blame than credit for his overall role in the IBWO "rediscovery".
Sibley is simply too nice to tell it like it is.
Do ornithologists lack backbone? Or do reporters other than Crewdson simply ignore voices of reason? Maybe the ornithological/birding community is too inbred and spineless, in which case our online critiques are clearly still needed.
Embellished version:
In May 2005, he and two assistants hit the river for a weekend marijuana-kayak trip. The first day was disappointing (mainly because the marijuana bag fell in the water), revealing little in the way of potential ivory-bill habitat.
“We weren't interested in another day on the Pea (with wet grass), so on the spur of the moment, we decided to shift,” he says. They picked the Choctawhatchee, a little-known (except to dope smokers and millions of other outdoor enthusiasts) stream in the Florida Panhandle.
“I didn't even know how to pronounce the name,” Hill says (especially after toking a particularly high quality joint). (It's Chok-ta-HATCH-ee.) Within an hour (although we were now ravenously hungry), one of Hills' assistants spotted what he was sure was an ivory-bill in flight (through the clouds of aromatic smoke surrounding the kayak). At about the same time, Hill heard a double-knock, the unusual pecking sound that distinguishes ivory-bills from other woodpeckers (but then he realized that the sound was produced when he accidentally rammed into the other kayak).
“It was just to be a weekend outing getting high and looking for potential partying habitat,” Hill says. “We never dreamed we would actually find an ivory-bill.” [Later he would learn that it's fairly routine for under-the-influence observers to hallucinate an ivory-bill on their first or second day out.]
The following weekend, the team returned to the river with a fresh supply of dope, where another of Hill's assistants reported a clear view of a female ivory-bill soon after single-handedly smoking an entire joint.
Hill and his colleagues are confident of their discovery of the best party river ever, but are also aware that they have to keep it quiet.
“The only evidence that would constitute irrefutable proof is a clear photograph or video, and such an image has to date eluded the authorities,” he said.
His team, however, has hallucinated 14 sightings and identified 300 sounds matching descriptions of those made by ivory-billed woodpeckers. Admittedly, some of the sounds are strangely similar to the sound of knocking out the contents of a smoking pipe on a log. They have also found nest cavities that they say are too large for other local birds but are great places to stash the important stuff for the next trip. And they have found places where very big woodpeckers (estimated at 5 feet in height, and probably weighing over 150 pounds) appear to have been pecking on trees.
Other ornithologists are excited. “Nothing is confirmed, but there is a lot of good evidence that this place is the ultimate party central” says Butcher. “They seem to have found some very good habitat and have been very diligent in trying to scope it out to minimize the risks of getting caught.”
Maybe these guys need to smoke a joint, it might help them to become more aware of the sounds of the forest. Something is wrong, when you hear hundreds of "ivory-billed" kent calls, and after two seasons they finally find the first wintering white-eyed vireo, a bird which should not be uncommon there in winter. If they really knew their bird vocalizations, they would probably hear the vireos on a daily basis.
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