...Throughout this first field season we had the mistaken idea that if an ivorybill was flushed from a spot, then it was gone from that spot for good. We made no effort to stake out specific locations where we encountered ivorybills. Our listening station data, however, indicated that ivorybills hung out in relatively small areas for days at a time and apparently returned to such favored spots even after they encountered a person. Unfortunately, Dan didn't discover this site tenacity until well after our spring search was over.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Hill on IBWO "site tenacity"
An excerpt from page 177 of Geoff Hill's book:
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11 comments:
What happened to setting up cameras on scaled trees and holes? I thought "site tenacity" was a huge part of the effort right from the start.
They knew about site tenacity this search season. That's why they got all those thrilling photos and videos!
Hill should know enough not to come up with any testable hypothesis.
This is one of the most amusing passages I've read in this entire fiasco, and I've read most of them. They started out not thinking it would be a good idea to keep looking in areas where they thought they detected IbWo's. But now, with a tip of the hat to advanced electronic surveillance techniques, they've determined that their quarry is definitely lurking around certain parts of the swamp (always on the wrong side of the tree, dang-it-all!). Keystone cop material.
Two reasons for hope:
1. Lack of visual detections means that the IBWO must be in full breeding mode
2. Lack of a decent photo or video means none of the observers were close enough to the IBWOs for long enough to disturb them
"Site Tenacity in a breeding population of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers" would be a great follow-up article for the Auburn team. Suggested journal: Annals of Improbable Research.
What kind of person is Hillcrow? To put all these "thoughts" into a book that will be his albatross for the rest of his life borders on delusional.
Does anybody here actually know this man? Has he always been this way?
ibwo athiest sez: "Suggested journal: Annals of Improbable Research".
I say the best journal would be the "Annals of Researching the Improbable".
These are scientific researchers looking for an extremely elusive bird, but when they "see" one they make no effort to note the specific location. It makes no sense. You would think that using a GPS to plot "sightings" would be both easy and helpful. Maybe a pattern would emerge. How could they not immediately recognize the utility of keeping a record? They sound like hacks.
anon 4:28 PM:
Does your suggested journal actually exist?
Mine does:
http://www.improbable.com/
The society also gives out the Ig Nobel prize. Surely the IBWO rediscoveries are improbable enough to merit at least one nomination.
IBWOs are obviously smarter than the researchers searching for them. Twits and Gumbies.
Throughout this first season we had the mistaken idea that if an ivorybill was flushed from a spot, then it was gone from that spot for good. We made no effort to stake out specific locations where we encountered ivorybills.
But earlier in the book Hill talks about having discovered "clusters" of cavities early on in the search, as in this passage from p. 140, where he relates part of a conversation around the campfire on the evening of January 4, 2006:
"And the three areas with clusters of cavities are the same areas where you've been detecting ivorybills," I noted.
"Yes," Tyler and Brian nodded.
"So we've got three cavity clusters and maybe three pairs of ivorybills," I added, always the most optimistic about the number of birds that we were dealing with.
At that point in their search they had already made 6 visual sightings and 8 sound detections (kents and double-knocks). But now, despite the existence of this early evidence, we are led to believe that they made no effort to focus subsequent searches on those "clusters" of cavities and associated detections of ivory-bills because they thought each bird they encountered "was gone from that spot forever"?
wouldn't it make more use of valuable time and equipment to place the monitors on the backside of trees with cavities? isn't that where the birds would be hiding?
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