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David Viner Day
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10 comments:
A-cavities? Bark scaling? Bunk and more bunk.
And then there's the statement that at this time they're not nesting. How do you know that? Didn't they just find recently fledged Hairy young someplace?
Why do these people insist on making factual statements about things they don't know?
The volunteers were alone most of the day, looking for a variety of signs of the mysterious bird's existence.
Haven't they learned to send people out in pairs yet? It sounds like they still don't understand the unreliability of an instantaneous single observer sighting.
Based on the A, B and C rating system - with 'A' indicating a large, irregular shape similar to an Ivory-billed Woodpecker cavity -- I spotted an 'A' cavity. This was a magnificent and unusual find."
And when previous A-rated cavities were monitored, they found Pileateds and squirrels coming out of them.
"The average Ivory-billed Woodpecker sighting lasts about five seconds
This statement was made before. In actuality, it appears to be less than half of that.
"my heart raced when I saw another woodpecker because I thought it could be the Ivory-billed. It was actually a red-headed woodpecker, and although it was smaller than an Ivory-billed, from a distance it had similar field marks."
Oh, the problems associated with actually having a good sighting.
Random thoughts....
Perhaps related to searchers risking being alone, I was amused by this quote from the mobile search team.... "Our last morning working from the base camp in the Big Swamp we devoted to freestyle exploration."
Also, if those wily IBWOs have undergone rapid evolution to become essentially undetectable, then doesn't it make sense that they have also stopped using A-holes, just to throw us off? Look in the C-holes, I tell you!
I wish all these searchers and their handlers would read and digest this 25-year-old note published in Auk:
http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v100n03/p0755-p0757.pdf
It seems right on point for this whole fiasco.
"The average Ivory-billed Woodpecker sighting lasts about five seconds"
Odd that my recent Pale-billed Woodpecker sightings averaged about five minutes.
I didn't encounter any A-holes.
Fishcrow is joining Bobby Harrison's "researchers scare off the birds" bandwagon. Take a look at his journal entry for March 1.
Anonymous said...
I wish all these searchers and their handlers would read and digest this 25-year-old note published in Auk:
Plus all searchers, researchers and scientists? out to prove they've seen an IBWO should be given a copy of Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man
The link cited by anonymous 3:07 is a great one, and SHOULD be required reading. The link doesn't fit in one line, so here it is broken down into two parts:
http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/
v100n03/p0755-p0757.pdf
It's entitled: On the Psychology of Watching Birds: the Problem of Observer-Expectancy Bias
A great quote:
"I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't believed it"
Link to the Auk paper is below--the one previously posted does not work:
On The Psychology of Watching Birds: The Problem of Observer-expectancy Bias (PDF file)
I've tried to convince some of how this whole IBWO fiasco is simply Observer Expectancy Bias. We had a comment war, over on John Trapps forum, a while back. Bill Pulliam who otherwise seems to be a logical fellow just couldn't quite absorb it.
You just can't convince true believers that such bias can lead to one misidentification after another by otherwise reliable observers. But that's exactly how Observer Expectancy Bias works.
It can affect anyone. And does. And ultimately this IBWO mess will be taught in statistics courses for years to come as a good example of the bias.
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