Here's one:
This is either a case of spectacular mass hallucination, or the bird is just remarkably wary.
Meta Does It Right With Nuclear Power
1 hour ago
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
My Blog List
-
-
-
-
“Why Do You Resist?”1 week ago
-
Tornadoes4 weeks ago
-
-
Hello world!9 months ago
-
-
-
Subscribe To
Posts
Comments
13 comments:
or the bird is just remarkably wary.
Dang that evil-ution is fast. Or, maybe it just migrated away.
Tom, Sounds like someone has been reading your Excuse List.
"Fitzpatrick is at ground zero in the ivorybill wars.."
This certainly is an attempt to reframe the role of Fitzcrow. Being at ground zero typically involves being a victim of either circumstance, nature or human aggression. The IBWO bomb that created this "ground zero" was created by Fitzcrow. Someone else might have given him the raw material but he is the one who created the bomb and then threw it to the unsuspecting press and public (who clearly are the real victims). The reason the CLO is "ground zero in the ivorybill wars" is because the southern swamps where all the action should be have produced nothing since Fitzcrow threw his bomb in 2005.
Amazing that Harvard Magazine would spend this much ink on what should be a disgrace to an alma mater - an alum who because of low scientific standards has made a joke out of his field of study.
Especially ironic is the illustration of an Ivory-bill with the caption:
"The ivorybill has—or had—a white trailing edge on its wing."
The illustration also shows, quite clearly, the white bill, white eye, and broad white stripes on the back, features not reported in any of the sightings reported in the 2005 Science paper.
And this statement: "The two species are distinguishable by differences in the black-and-white patterns on their wings, the pileated having a black trailing edge on its wing, the ivorybill a white one."
They forgot to add, "and by a number of other field marks and distinctive calls" none noted during the reported sightings that started the whole flap. Then he points out he has trouble believing the bird is now silent. Wow, so do I.
Then we hear "it's all about preserving the habitat". The areas where the bird was claimed to have been seen are in National Wildlife Refuges, already well-protected. This is doubly ironic because there is a lot of evidence the IBWO did not primarily live in swamp forest--it may have nested in swamps, but it seems to have fed a lot in the forests of large pines, especially Long-leaf pine. These forests were decimated in the 1880's, when the IBWO really began to decline. The related Cuban Ivory-bill and Imperial Woodpecker were mainly birds of pine forests.
--More later on that--I need to do some more research on the whole habitat thing.
Audubon wrote (see “More News to Come…” July-August 2005, page 88), “Its notes are clear, loud, and yet rather plaintive. They are heard at a considerable distance, perhaps half a mile….These are heard so frequently as to induce me to say that the bird spends few minutes of the day without uttering them, and this circumstance leads to its destruction….”
In the early nineteenth century, the ivorybill was easily found. Now, as Mel White put it, the faithful have to believe that the Lord God Bird, “in its twenty-first-century incarnation, has been transformed into a creature as shy as Bambi, as silent as a Trappist monk, as anxious to avoid photographers as a Mafia stool pigeon in a witness-protection program —altogether invisible to the human senses as a stealth fighter is to radar.”
Fence-sitters, please carefully read and consider the above quote.
"My conviction is that the bird did exist in 2004-05—at least one, as we published,” says Fitzpatrick. It may still be around. But we can tell you for sure that last year we could not find it in the same region in which we had regularly been seeing it earlier. It was probably a dispersing, unpaired male."
Excuses #6 and #14. Possibly also #12 and #13.
Also see the following from the comments sections of the excuse post (not sure how to number them):
"They cover vast distances."
"How about the famous "it was a wandering bird and was here, but it must have moved on" excuse?"
"We put in a huge piece of work, although with all of that energy and person-power, we managed to cover only about a quarter of the forest. These are big places. A bird of this kind can move. It’s daunting."
Excuse #1.
"If you Google “birds,” the first hit will be the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (www.birds.cornell.edu)"
Gosh, do you think that if you put "birds" as the first name in your website you might be able to be one of the first (and not the first as Harvard Magazine states) hits on Google for "birds". What a brilliant marketing strategy. Next time they should put more emphasis on peer review than Google hits.
This is the sort of frivolous puffery usually found in airline magazines. Harvard magazine must be aimed at the upper class twits, who have the hereditary money to donate buildings and endow professors.
The top Google ad on the Harvard magazine page (right margin) is captioned
"Get Rid of Woodpeckers".
To sum up;
I, Fitzpatrick, will never admit, concede, or feel a pang of conscientiousness (sic) that I, Fitzpatrick, SCREWED UP. And I, Fitzpatrick, will continue to support wasting millions of dollars for years and years until I retire to Florida.
Period, the end.
I didn't realize that Melanie Driscol only got 3 wingbeats of a view. At 8 wingbeats a second, that's a .375 second glimpse. If that's the best sighting they got, they aint got squat.
I didn't realize that Melanie Driscol only got 3 wingbeats of a view. At 8 wingbeats a second, that's a .375 second glimpse.
Which means that she claims to have clearly seen and correctly assessed patterns on the ventral and dorsal surfaces of a wing completing a full beat every .125 seconds. In a word, riiiiiggghhhttt.
If that's the best sighting they got, they aint got squat.
You can just cut that down to the last 4 words.
I just read Audubon's description that Patrick Coin referred to (thanks for that). It seems to contain several descriptions that are at odds with the common beliefs coming from the TBs.
The flight of this bird is graceful in the extreme, although seldom prolonged to more than a few hundred yards at a time, unless when it has to cross a large river, which it does in deep undulations, opening its wings at first to their full extent, and nearly closing them to renew the propelling impulse. The transit from one tree to another, even should the distance be as much as a hundred yards, is performed by a single sweep, and the bird appears as if merely swinging itself from the top of the one tree to that of the other, forming an elegantly curved line.
What about the Pintail-like flight? What happened to 8+ beats per second? Where are the reports of "deep undulations"?
It never utters any sound whilst on wing, unless during the love-season; but at all other times, no sooner has this bird alighted than its remarkable voice is heard, at almost every leap which it makes, whilst ascending against the upper parts of the trunk of a tree, or its highest branches.
This sentence precedes the one Patrick quoted. It speaks for itself.
They are usually repeated three times in succession, and may be represented by the monosyllable pait, pait, pait.
Do any of Hill's recordings do that? I don't think they do.
The hole is, I believe, always made in the trunk of a live tree, generally an ash or a hagberry, and is at a great height.
Does this description match the holes that they think look so good? Are they in live trees or dead ones?
To prevent such a calamity, the hole is generally dug immediately under the junction of a large branch with the trunk.
Does this description match the holes that they think look so good?
[after Audubon's description of feeding in dead tree]... all the while sounding its loud notes, as if highly delighted.
Note "all the while", not once every few minutes. Nothing from Florida even comes close.
How come it seems that none of this has been discussed at length by the searchers? I read quotes from Tanner about the birds being quiet at the nest, but then all woodpeckers are quiet at the nest and when they have eggs or chicks. Is this a convenient parsing of the published information?
Is this a convenient parsing of the published information?
That's exactly what it is. If your "evidence" doesn't fit, force it. If it still doesn't fit, just say "the birds have changed."
"This is doubly ironic because there is a lot of evidence the IBWO did not primarily live in swamp forest--it may have nested in swamps, but it seems to have fed a lot in the forests of large pines, especially Long-leaf pine. These forests were decimated in the 1880's, when the IBWO really began to decline. The related Cuban Ivory-bill and Imperial Woodpecker were mainly birds of pine forests."
I think Patrick has hit the nail on the head. Name one habitat type that has been reduced to 3% of it's orignial range---Longleaf Pine Forest.
Bottomlands have been reduced (no doubt), but not to that extent. I really think it was the loss of the Longleaf Pine forest that really did the bird in, and there really isn't any large expanse of that left anymore (Tall Timbers & Eglin, excluded...they have been worked over so much that no birds could have remained undetected)
Post a Comment