Some notes on "Ivorybill Hunters"

1. On page 232, Hill provides one frame of an "Ivory-bill" video.

He feels the need to circle the "Ivory-bill" in the picture (never a good sign). The circled area looks very much like the rest of the (uncircled) background foliage.

Here's some discussion from page 234:

Brian also found evidence for a third bird in the few seconds of video that culminate with him positively identifying an ivorybill. Just before the bird comes off the tree above his head, there is a flash of white going left to a tree and then right out of the picture. You can't see any detail, but it looks pretty much like all the other birds flashing white that we are calling ivorybills...

2. Hill confirms that his search area is where Bruce Creek flows into the Roaring Cutoff (page 216).

3. Here is an excerpt from page 134:

When I submitted to Nature the paper summarizing our evidence for ivorybills along the Choctawhatchee River, all of my correspondence was with the assistant to the subeditor in charge of Brief Communications--a person three or four tiers below the editor-in-chief. I didn't even rate a personal note from a subeditor. Fitzpatrick's access to Kennedy means that in April 2005 he was a power broker in the world of science.

4. Here's an excerpt from page 197, after Tyler Hicks tells Hill about a "huge, newly cut cavity" he found:

"...just before dark a Pileated Woodpecker flew in and went into the cavity. It was a huge cavity, too. I think having a pileated use this cavity might undermine our claim that cavities bigger than five inches in diameter were carved by ivorybills," Tyler added, clearly trying to encourage me to be cautious in how I presented what we had found so far.

5. Was Hill's search area always very wet and inaccessible? On page 73, he writes:

In November ['05] I had made a brief solo trip to the Bruce Creek area and had found the swamp bone dry. With the water so low, hiking was remarkably easy. The forest floor, which in the spring had been mostly under water and had then been a slippery, muddy mess, was a smooth dirt surface. Because the area is inundated much of the year, there is almost no ground cover, and I could stroll easily through the open forest...