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Friday Funny: MAD SCIAM MAGAZINE
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14 comments:
I wish I could be so generous. I know a thing or two about Tyler Hicks. He is, frankly, too good of a birder to mistake a Pileated for an Ivory-billed if he'd seen it for the duration he claimed.
I think that Tyler Hicks made up his sighting, just as he's likely made up many other bird sightings and stories he's told.
If you're a good guy, Tyler, you'll apologize to Dr. Hill.
Personally, I wouldn't go so far as to claim he made it up and I don't think he did. Most people involved in the whole IBWO flap truly believe, or believed, in their claims. I have had long lingering looks at animals or birds and later figured out they were leaves or stumps. Put a few strange white feathers or missing feathers on a Pileated and your mind can play tricks. It is very easy to honestly fool yourself into seeing what you really want to see.
Clearly the time is long since past where Cornell should come clean on things they've learned about alternate sources of interesting tree holes, bark stripping, kent calls, double knocks and the like, and that there is no good reason to believe that their second tiny perched Ivory-bill in the Luneau video is even a bird, etc, etc.
But maybe Tyler saw that the last IBWO and it died the next day!
You can't prove that didn't happen, so you have no right to disparage Tyler's reputation. After all, he's only a child.
/tireless apologist off
I know Hicks and you likely don't. I know more about him than you. You've likely never birded with anyone like him, even in Arizona or at Cape May. His skills are utterly sublime. In the field he'd outshine Sibley. But knowing him means knowing that he is so full of shit about so much that I am pretty sure he is making this up. And as Hicks goes, so goes Hill.
Ilya Maclean wrote....
No I don't think Tyler is a complete fraud....
As frauds go, he is fairly complete.
I just question whether the keenness and kudos have in the instance outweighed his honesty.
They wouldn't have to weigh much.
Notice the posts here by those who know him. I know him by reputation only, but that reputation is less than pristine. Ilya is being very nice and polite, but she isn't as easily scammed as Professor Hill.
Shit hot birder he might be, but he's piss-poor at taking field notes. I don't know quite how things work over there in the US with documenting rarities, but quite frankly Tyler's notes could be put to shame by a novice kid-lister over here.
p.s. I'm a bloke not a "she"
Ilya
I'm getting pretty tired of this whole Hicks story, with rumors and innuendo passing for evidence of his birding skills or character. If you've got real evidence, real dirt, lets have at it. Otherwise, your "evidence" is as flimsy as the IBWO claims.
Evidence.
Hicks sees IBWO. Therefore, Hicks is a bad birder.
Q.E.D.
Good birder bad birder, whatever.
Hicks made a claim more serious than anyone else. He claimed to have had a long enough look at the bird for it to be completely diagnostic. But where is Hicks now? At least Rich Guthrie goes on the radio to talk about his sighting. Even Hillcrow is patient and openly talks about his sightings. But Hicks disappears to wherever.
WHERE IS HICKS THESE DAYS, and why isn't he man enough to come out and discuss his "sighting".
Hicks is playing games with birding and ornithology and needs a reality check BAD.
The next best thing to a boycott would simply be a list of questions for Hill about some of his bizarre statements on his blog relating to the discovery of IBWOs in his secret Florida sandbox.
Faced with that prospect, I think Hill's alleged interest in science would disappear like a frightened turtle ...
"WHERE IS HICKS THESE DAYS"
Probably interviewing for a position with the DOE.
"If you've got real evidence, real dirt, lets have at it"
His piss-poor notes speak for themselves. What a joke. I don't know how anyone could consider this guy to be a serious birder.
I come from the opposite school. I've birded with Hicks, and I've birded with some of the best in the country. Hicks rivals the best. He's blessed with natural birding gifts that are akin to being gifted musically or with languages. He's also very well read on birding ecology and id issues and is a pretty darned knowledgable naturalist and outdoorsman.
HIs notes suck because he is not much of an academic. He is, like Kaufman, a high school droput who is now in college via the GED.
J'accuse Hicks of something much worse than bad birding. I am convinced Hicks made up his sighting. Guthcrow, Hillcrow, Fishcrow, ect, have let their imaginations get the best of them with 1/2 second sightings. But Hicks "saw" it for too long and is too good to be wrong.
Hicks, when are you going to come clean?
"HIs notes suck"
Therefore he is not a good birder, no matter how blessed he is by a mystical ability to locate birds. Why should we believe the observations of someone who can't write or sketch accurately?
"You've likely never birded with anyone like him, even in Arizona"
Yes I have. I met a kid who claimed to have seen Eared Trogon and Cerulean Warbler and then reported a Plain-capped Starthroat from feeders we had been watching together, but didn't bother notifying me or anyone else in the vicinity. He then reported starthroats from other feeders on the same day. No competent birder ever saw them of course. Like Hicks he must have been blessed with "natural birding gifts that are akin to being gifted musically or with languages" because he found multiple starthroats on a single day that birders watching the same feeders day after day could never see.
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