1. More from Rich Guthrie is here.
Update: Guthrie discusses his alleged IBWO sighting here (MP3).
2. "Hearing is believing?" here.
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16 comments:
It just wouldn’t happen. I was going from the drop-off point to my assigned coverage area. Even though the camera was “on”, it was in a “pause” mode. Digital cameras take a few whirring moments to get out of that mode and into the picture mode.
Can't somebody teach any of these people how to actually use a digital camera? If the time taken for the camera to be ready to take the picture was long enough for the bird to have disappeared then I struggle to see how it was long enough for him to have made an identification. Oops, I'm forgetting, very short observations are an essential part of any IBWO sighting....
Not to attempt a picture was a conscious decision
Which is nicely convenient, as it avoids him having to explain away a photograph of a PIWO. As for not wanting to disturb a bird that is already flying diagonally away from you....surely a worthwhile addition to the IBWO list of excuses.
Well, I grudgingly have to hand it to Rich. He's not defensive. He understands the skeptic viewpoint. There's not a lot to criticize. I'm sure he's mad at himself for not noticing the head, dorsal stripes and bill. That can happen. He seems to know that one field mark is not enough for confirmation (but it seems enough for his own personal confirmation). Can't really criticize that too much. Oh well.
Let's assume that individual ivory-bills CAN live 20 years or more. Is it possible that there is not a breeding population anywhere, but just a couple of lone birds not on territory trying to bark-scale out a living on 50 square miles. That could explain the inability to find a bird repeatedly. Although if it found a good patch of forage you could assume it would come back to it. Damn, what am I doing. STOP. I'm getting my freakin hopes up again. Why couldn't he have been a whacko!
Guthriecrow poses a minor dilemma for CLO. Fitzcrow obviously plans to conclude that there really was one Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas in 2005, as he says is shown in CLO's digitally enhanced version of Luneau's blurry video of a Pileated Woodpecker, but that it somehow met its demise and could not be found by an army of searchers. Any other conclusion would require withdrawal of the rediscovery article in Science and admission of gross incompetence and scientific fraud.
Now someone reportedly with more established birding credentials than anyone who claims to have seen Ivory-billed Woodpecker in 2005 has claimed a sighting in 2007 while participating in an official CLO search in Arkansas. The only solution for Cornell will be to throw out the sighting as not sufficient under their revised rules for counting Ivory-billed Woodpecker.
(Since the discovery of CLO's credentials inflation, it's now "Professor" Lammertink, not "Doctor" Lammertink, who also is still working on his "crow".)
But keep in mind, the area is huge. And the woodpecker is going to be at any one place at any one time. We really don’t know all that much about this bird’s behavior. It has earned a reputation to be very ellusive. If that’s the case, if it hears or sees you coming, apparently it will slip away, long before you are within sight of it - especially in the limited visibility realm of the swamplands.
He hit many items on the "excuse list." Good advice about sitting and waiting. Of course, that's what all those automatic cameras, including the state-of-the-art "robotic cameras" have been doing. Around the clock, seven days a week in the best spots anyone can think of. The trouble is with the photos. Which show Pileateds and every other confusion species around, but no Ivory-bills.
Can anyone think of any reasonable explanation? I hope no one is questioning the honesty of the cameras, are they?
Guthrie sounds like a minor intellect like Hill. He saw one but can understand the Skepticism. Now we should go get a photo.
Gee, thanks Guthrie.
Anonymous Marcus Benkarkis said:
Martin deserves an automatic crow.
Does Lammertink actually believe what he is saying?
Does it dawn on him to ask, "hmmm, obviously something else can make double knocks. What could it be?"
It's now a proven fact that even some well-known birders that previously had good reputations are now seen to be basically new-age unscientific average thinkers that could just as well find an uncommon bird in their area and/or go farther afield and find an extinct one.
That's the really neat thing about this whole absurd fiasco. Normal people that we know and love can turn out to be nuts, at least in one aspect of their lives.
I will have to see a picture to be convinced, but:
1. I don’t see how even a moderately accomplished birder could mistake a pileated woodpecker for anything else.
2. I can’t see why an academic, or anyone else for that matter, would put his reputation at risk with a hoax.
I will be delighted if it proves out, but I don't have a stake in it one way or another.
hillcrow's group sent a feather up to the smithsonian ... the smithsonian sequenced it.
swing and a miss.
I'm not making this up.
you will have to file a FOIA request to find out the facts cause they aren't talking.
Word is that the feather from the cavity was a trush of somekind and not as Hillcrow et al hoped, an IBWO.
just the facts ...
I don’t see how even a moderately accomplished birder could mistake a pileated woodpecker for anything else.
A quote from Dr. Jerome Jackson (my bold font):
Across the field, I spotted what I was sure was a wild turkey. We stopped the car and the six of us cautiously slipped out of the doors on the opposite side of the car. We all viewed the bird through our binoculars, and we all agreed it was a turkey. We enjoyed watching it for awhile. We got back in the car, and drove another hundred yards when I saw there was a lane that crossed the field towards our turkey. I suggested that we slowly drive down that lane and that perhaps I could get a photo of the bird. When we got within about 70 yards and raised our binoculars, we were most surprised to find our “turkey” was a stump with a branch sticking up next to it that had two red leaves blowing in the wind!” We laugh together. (I do not mention the time I mistook an armadillo for a bear.)
Something similar has happened to all of us. There's no reason it couldn't have happened to this fellow.
Mistakes are common.
Ivory-billed woodpeckers are almost certainly extinct.
Anonymous Marcus Benkarkis said:
Martin is killing me with his "double knock" theory. The mano who, who many moons ago, estimated 12 breeding pairs in the White River Area.
The current breeding population now includes all the old territory.
Mr. Guthrie sounds eerily similar to Professor Hill. I know I saw it, trust me people, but I can understand the skepticism.
This is just totally insance.
Tree dwelling, mountain hiding Peruvian oddities with on the mark pictures, yet we can't find a 3 foot wingspan that is supposedly existing in Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, and possibly Texas and Alabama.
Like the other person said, eons ago, Look I just saw a Unicorn. I'll even get you a fuzzy photo.
I don’t see how even a moderately accomplished birder could mistake a pileated woodpecker for anything else.
I have seen some of the top birders in the country make some pretty glaring mistakes in field ID. The difference between a top birder and a birder with less experience is the top birder does not trust his own lying eyes in split-second sightings. He knows how to deal with mis-IDs. He knows how to verify his sightings, or to just categorize them as "misses".
He will strive to get a better look. He knows his limitations,
And he is professional about working within them. It takes a long time to be a top birder, but even a longer time to know thyself.
Many involved in the IBWO saga are not being true to themselves. Not being true to their own abilities and limitations.
Okay, we have established that we can misidentify birds. Last week I myself saw a dozen cedar waxwings perched at 200 yards that at 8 X magnification turned into tufts of leaves in a newly budded tree.
But here we have presumably able birders, a species not confirmed in 60 years, the claimed sighting of which will be scrutinized from Dan to Bathsheba by every professional and amateur birder on the planet, and without a photograph in hand, these birder are willing to say to the world, “I saw an ivory billed woodpecker.” Their position and/or future in the academy absolutely at risk, much to lose by being wrong and comparatively little to gain by being right, and absolutely nothing to lose by waiting to get the photograph, and still they say they saw it.
Tenured professor or promising doctoral candidate or even just average Joe Birder—I just don’t see anybody saying that based on a fleeting glimpse.
Tenured professor or promising doctoral candidate or even just average Joe Birder—I just don’t see anybody saying that based on a fleeting glimpse.
With 300 million Americans running around, don't underestimate stupidity.
"I quickly thought photo. It just wouldn’t happen"
I just got back from Central America, and do you know how long it took me to obtain an identifiable photo of a Campephilus?
I obtained a poor but fully identifiable photo of Pale-billed on my first morning in the field a mere ten minutes after breakfast!
"My concern was that if I fumbled around with that camera, the bird would be further disturbed and wouldn’t pull up"
On my recent trip I was watching a Pale-billed perched in a tree and it didn't move when a land rover pulling an ATV in tow bumped along right below it. I was far more disturbed by the vehicles than was the Pale-billed safely clinging to its branch.
"But keep in mind, the area is huge"
The Pale-billeds I saw were within one of the largest areas of intact forest in the region yet chose to remain next to one of the only inhabited sites for miles around. So much for the theory that Campephilus are afraid of people.
"We really don’t know all that much about this bird’s behavior"
True. If "we" don't read the literature, don't bother to study the extant Campephilus in the field, and believe the absurdities propogated by the CLO, especially woodpecker "experts" such as Lammertink, and other IBWO TBs then we will indeed remain profoundly ignorant.
"It has earned a reputation to be very ellusive"
...among the ignorant, credulous, and gullible.
"ellusive" [sic!]
IBWO TBs have earned a reputation for being unable to spell.
"If that’s the case, if it hears or sees you coming, apparently it will slip away, long before you are within sight of it - especially in the limited visibility realm of the swamplands"
If this is the case, why are Neotropical Campephilus and Dryocopus so easy to locate, observe at great length, and photograph, even though they live in dense forests where visibility remains low year-round?
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