A Birder's World interview with Bobby Harrison is here.
5 comments:
Anonymous
said...
So Bobby wants 10 million so that searchers can stay out there en perpetuity? We're looking at 50 more years of cranks in the woods, hiding their sightings from establishment science that is now the bird's biggest threat?
Bobby's obviously spent decades polishing his theories, patched together with the most flimsy of evidence. It's sad to see someone with so much faith in a pipe dream.
The only way that they could collect specimens would be by finding a nest or a roost. They'd be out early in the morning and listen for the calls. And it would take them days sometimes.
Even Arthur Allen [founder of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology] in the Singer Tract searched for the bird for three days.
Right Bobby. So you guys located the bird(s) in Arkansas, right? And Hill did in Florida? And Fishcrow in the Pearl? So you know where they are but you STILL can't really get a good look or a photo in days, weeks, years???
Why any serious person can't recognize that Bobby Harrison is a buffoon is beyond me. He's another true believer seeing what he wants to see. Even Cornell doesn't think his "Ivory-bill video" is an Ivory-bill. If Cornell doesn't believe it, you know it's bogus. If he's blown it on that video (and Cornell's) common sense dictates that his other miraculous sightings are also the result of an over-active imagination. Unfortunately, common sense is in short supply in this fiasco.
The interviewer poses a question to Bobby about skeptics that includes "The tone was not academic. It was like, You're wrong and I'm right, and you're bad and I'm good."
Anyone who has spent any time at all in academia knows that the tone there is no different than any other arena where individuals are fighting for resources and status. The people in academia are just less attractive and more socially inept than those in the business world and less fit and organized than those in the military.
Any real academic (vs. someone jumping on the IBWO bandwagon) looked at the evidence and would be completely correct in saying"you're wrong" to someone who said they had undeniable proof of an IBWO. Similarly anyone who saw the intense grandstanding, disinformation campaign and fund raising that followed the rediscovery would be completely justified in saying "It is bad to fool an unsuspecting public and attempt to take funds from real conservation efforts based on your unconvincing evidence".
Does the interviewer really think that the Hill camp producing rumors, books, etc. but no evidence is really "academic"?
I recently returned from Central America where I found that Pale-billed Woodpeckers were even easier to locate and observe than I had remembered. As usual, I made no effort to locate Campephilus, but still found multiple pairs. They allowed very lengthy, close views in full sun on the near side of trunks. Their calls, knocks, and short flights between trees were so obvious that my non-birding colleague commented upon their presence, which could not possibly have been overlooked. For the most part they seemed oblivious to our presence. Only once did the Pale-billed seem alarmed, at which point it flew about ten feet from an obvious, exposed perch to an even more obvious perch just above. Their double-knock calls were quite unlike any other animate or inanimate sounds in the forest, did not vary perceptibly in quality, timbre, or duration, and were repeated so that I could have easily tracked down the birds if I hadn't already seen them so well and frequently when not searching for them. I saw no interesting cavities nor tantalizing bark scaling, which is not surprising as these are less conspicuous than the birds themselves.
I have had similar experiences with Pale-billed before in Costa Rica and with other Campephilus, including Guayaquil, Powerful, Crimson-bellied, Crimson-crested Woodpeckers in Ecuador, and Magellanic Woodpeckers in Chile. They were all relatively easy to find and very easy to observe at length once located.
Dr. Lammertink and other members of the IBWO team may be large woodpecker experts, but none of them has seen an Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and their characterizations of Campephilus behavior do not accord with the field experiences of those who have seen the conspicuous extant species.
I feel, and this may sound arrogant, but I feel like I'm one of the best people to be out there searching for this bird simply because of my approach to searching. I don't think that putting a ton of people into the swamp is the best way to look for this bird. And that's what the institutions have been doing.
Excuse number what?
I just think it moves out of the area where the concentrated people are. If you're over in the northeast section, it's going to be in another section of the swamp. It's going to avoid the area where you're at.
Concentrated? Does he think they're sending in 100 people per square mile?
Of course, I'm a very big advocate of using decoys. I've already had positive results with that.
Birds figure out owl decoys are fake in a very short time. This is just ridiculous.
I think the foundation is important because it's going to get me out full-time
Well I'm sure THAT's true.
And if you get a lot of people searching for this bird, making noise all over that swamp, that bird just avoids the area.
What the heck does this guy think the searchers are doing? Doesn't he understand that there are hunters and fisherman in those areas on a regular basis?
And you really can't put a lot of faith into what Audubon says. He says an awful lot of things. Even his natural history is wrong on a lot of the birds. He was a real showman. He would say and write for the masses, you know, to entertain.
I don't even know what to say about this statement. He has completely dismissed Audubon's multiple sightings with one quick sweep.
He [Luneau] stopped to check the camera. David said when he clicked the trolling motor in the lock position, the bird flew off. And it wasn't their talking that did it. It was the mechanical, non-natural, metal-against-metal-type sound that frightened the bird off. Had they just gone upstream, that bird would have just come around the tree and gone about its business, and they would have never known it.
So he knows what the bird was thinking, what exactly flushed it, and what it would have done "if". This guy is so full of himself it defies description.
And I'm 100 percent sure five times. And one time that I haven't made public.
Oh, Mike Collins is going to be so jealous.
This guy is delusional. Conjecture and fact have blended seamlessly in his mind. He has completely lost touch with reality.
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5 comments:
So Bobby wants 10 million so that searchers can stay out there en perpetuity? We're looking at 50 more years of cranks in the woods, hiding their sightings from establishment science that is now the bird's biggest threat?
Bobby's obviously spent decades polishing his theories, patched together with the most flimsy of evidence. It's sad to see someone with so much faith in a pipe dream.
The only way that they could collect specimens would be by finding a nest or a roost. They'd be out early in the morning and listen for the calls. And it would take them days sometimes.
Even Arthur Allen [founder of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology] in the Singer Tract searched for the bird for three days.
Right Bobby. So you guys located the bird(s) in Arkansas, right? And Hill did in Florida? And Fishcrow in the Pearl? So you know where they are but you STILL can't really get a good look or a photo in days, weeks, years???
Why any serious person can't recognize that Bobby Harrison is a buffoon is beyond me. He's another true believer seeing what he wants to see. Even Cornell doesn't think his "Ivory-bill video" is an Ivory-bill. If Cornell doesn't believe it, you know it's bogus. If he's blown it on that video (and Cornell's) common sense dictates that his other miraculous sightings are also the result of an over-active imagination. Unfortunately, common sense is in short supply in this fiasco.
The interviewer poses a question to Bobby about skeptics that includes "The tone was not academic. It was like, You're wrong and I'm right, and you're bad and I'm good."
Anyone who has spent any time at all in academia knows that the tone there is no different than any other arena where individuals are fighting for resources and status. The people in academia are just less attractive and more socially inept than those in the business world and less fit and organized than those in the military.
Any real academic (vs. someone jumping on the IBWO bandwagon) looked at the evidence and would be completely correct in saying"you're wrong" to someone who said they had undeniable proof of an IBWO. Similarly anyone who saw the intense grandstanding, disinformation campaign and fund raising that followed the rediscovery would be completely justified in saying "It is bad to fool an unsuspecting public and attempt to take funds from real conservation efforts based on your unconvincing evidence".
Does the interviewer really think that the Hill camp producing rumors, books, etc. but no evidence is really "academic"?
I recently returned from Central America where I found that Pale-billed Woodpeckers were even easier to locate and observe than I had remembered. As usual, I made no effort to locate Campephilus, but still found multiple pairs. They allowed very lengthy, close views in full sun on the near side of trunks. Their calls, knocks, and short flights between trees were so obvious that my non-birding colleague commented upon their presence, which could not possibly have been overlooked. For the most part they seemed oblivious to our presence. Only once did the Pale-billed seem alarmed, at which point it flew about ten feet from an obvious, exposed perch to an even more obvious perch just above. Their double-knock calls were quite unlike any other animate or inanimate sounds in the forest, did not vary perceptibly in quality, timbre, or duration, and were repeated so that I could have easily tracked down the birds if I hadn't already seen them so well and frequently when not searching for them. I saw no interesting cavities nor tantalizing bark scaling, which is not surprising as these are less conspicuous than the birds themselves.
I have had similar experiences with Pale-billed before in Costa Rica and with other Campephilus, including Guayaquil, Powerful, Crimson-bellied, Crimson-crested Woodpeckers in Ecuador, and Magellanic Woodpeckers in Chile. They were all relatively easy to find and very easy to observe at length once located.
Dr. Lammertink and other members of the IBWO team may be large woodpecker experts, but none of them has seen an Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and their characterizations of Campephilus behavior do not accord with the field experiences of those who have seen the conspicuous extant species.
I feel, and this may sound arrogant, but I feel like I'm one of the best people to be out there searching for this bird simply because of my approach to searching. I don't think that putting a ton of people into the swamp is the best way to look for this bird. And that's what the institutions have been doing.
Excuse number what?
I just think it moves out of the area where the concentrated people are. If you're over in the northeast section, it's going to be in another section of the swamp. It's going to avoid the area where you're at.
Concentrated? Does he think they're sending in 100 people per square mile?
Of course, I'm a very big advocate of using decoys. I've already had positive results with that.
Birds figure out owl decoys are fake in a very short time. This is just ridiculous.
I think the foundation is important because it's going to get me out full-time
Well I'm sure THAT's true.
And if you get a lot of people searching for this bird, making noise all over that swamp, that bird just avoids the area.
What the heck does this guy think the searchers are doing? Doesn't he understand that there are hunters and fisherman in those areas on a regular basis?
And you really can't put a lot of faith into what Audubon says. He says an awful lot of things. Even his natural history is wrong on a lot of the birds. He was a real showman. He would say and write for the masses, you know, to entertain.
I don't even know what to say about this statement. He has completely dismissed Audubon's multiple sightings with one quick sweep.
He [Luneau] stopped to check the camera. David said when he clicked the trolling motor in the lock position, the bird flew off. And it wasn't their talking that did it. It was the mechanical, non-natural, metal-against-metal-type sound that frightened the bird off. Had they just gone upstream, that bird would have just come around the tree and gone about its business, and they would have never known it.
So he knows what the bird was thinking, what exactly flushed it, and what it would have done "if". This guy is so full of himself it defies description.
And I'm 100 percent sure five times. And one time that I haven't made public.
Oh, Mike Collins is going to be so jealous.
This guy is delusional. Conjecture and fact have blended seamlessly in his mind. He has completely lost touch with reality.
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