...I know that wishful thinking is not going to stop. There are going to be more phantom sightings. That is certain for at least two reasons. Firstly, people want to believe in it, and so they'll see what they want to see. Secondly, some people believe that a pure-hearted person can reach into the mystical and imaginary world and pull out something to carry back to physical reality. This is a mindset that says personal sincerity can defeat the conservation of mass and energy. I believe this superstitiousness is the central reason for the whole Arkansas farce. It's something that is predictable, and it was predicted indeed in 2003 by Birdwatcher's Digest.
Dennis Overbye Retiring
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econdly, some people believe that a pure-hearted person can reach into the mystical and imaginary world and pull out something to carry back to physical reality.
Who you gonna' call? GHOSTBIRD BUSTERS!
Ok, but how do you explain 9 pairs? Sure 1 is wishful thinking. But 9?
If Hillcrow talks in Wyoming at the AOU meet and no one is there, do the double knocks and kents stop?
9 pairs and none of them real?
Erik Blom (1947-2002) in Bird Watcher's Digest, Sept/Oct 2003: http://www.birdwatchersdigest.com/site/conservation/ivory_billed_woodpecker.aspx
Here's the link to that very well-written article by the late Eric Blom--Seeking the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Some choice quotes that, I feel, really ring true today (Remember, this was written in 2002 or ealier!):
"Skeptics are neither cynics nor spoilsports....We are awash in wonder and awe. It is just that we prefer being awed by the truly awesome and to wonder at the truly wonderful. We aren't interested in wasting our time on the artificial, the phony, and the illusory."
"Believers argue that the great woodpecker is shy and retiring and shuns humans. That may be true, at least partly, but many birds are shy, retiring, cryptic, and just plain hard to get a glimpse of. Over and over again, however, dedicated, enthusiastic, patient observers do see, photograph, and refind them."
"The true believers, the ones that most passionately want there to still be ivory-billeds out there somewhere, wild and free, argue that the birds were overlooked because the area is usually inaccessible and it was only the drought that made it possible to get in and see the woodpeckers. It won't wash. Yes, much of the Pearl River Management Area is wet in most years, but the area where the birds were reported is hardly inaccessible and remote. There are roads crisscrossing it...[and] hunters by the truckload. Bird watchers wander around it in every season. All those people are as likely to have overlooked a population of ivory-billeds as they are to have overlooked a tribe of elves."
"The problem of population is another powerful argument against the continued existence of the ivory-billed woodpecker....What that means is that there are not a couple of last, lost ivory-billeds that have been hiding for the past 50 years. It means that there have been generations of birds, birds breeding and successfully raising young....We are not talking about a couple of woodpeckers, we are talking about a bunch of them. And where have they been hiding? One bird might elude detection for a while, but not clumps of them."
And best of all,...
"I never told anyone this, but while I was in Pearl River I saw an ivory-billed woodpecker....It was so real it coursed through my body like a drug and I could feel tears, not of sadness but of wonder and awe. It was the most emotional moment I have had in 30 years of watching birds, and it moved me as few things have done....But there was no bird there."
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