Monday, November 05, 2007

Robert Anderson and the "Ivory-bill"

Here.

1 comment:

Cotinis said...

Two more excuses for the list. Excellent!
Following my soon-to-be-published classification of Ivorybill excuses™, this would appear to be a type 3 (wariness) excuse, always in style, with what I call a type 5b (camera wariness) thrown in:
"The birds are keenly attuned to anything unusual in their environment. The movement of a kayak paddle or a brief reflection of sunlight on a metallic camera sends them flying."
They must spend a lot of time flying away from things--swirls in the water from fish, lightning, hunters, fisherman. They need to learn to habituate like other birds. Perhaps in 60 more years their shyness will disappear. I thought this was original, but I believe some other blog mentioned that the IBWO must be wary of man-made objects.

Then comes another classic no photo excuse, a type 5a (camera left in bag or malfunctioned):
"...he was drifting alone down a creek off Florida's Choctawhatchee, video camera in hand and rolling. He set the camera in his lap to push a branch out of his way, and that's when he saw it."

Well, obviously he would not have seen it with the video camera in position, the IBWO being able to detect the metal object and all. At last we have a logical explanation for the camera-shyness. I guess the cameras need Ghillie suits as well.

I may start a blog devoted solely to cataloging IBWO excuses. They would seem to be more abundant than IBWO themselves.