"How can there be a bird that is impossible to photograph?"

An article on Geoff Hill is here.

Newly found Cuban Ivory-bill images

Here.

"it would take them days sometimes"

A Birder's World interview with Bobby Harrison is here.

Today's links

1. Over on Birdforum, skeptics are once again being blamed for the complete failure of all Ivory-bill searches over the last six decades.

The message seems to be that skeptics prevented enough searching in the past, and now they're causing too much searching.

2. Ken Rosenberg resurfaces here.

An excerpt:

A second keynote address, which is free and open to the public, will be presented Friday at 7:30 p.m. by Kenneth Rosenberg, director of conservation science at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. Rosenberg will speak on "Saving an Ecosystem through Endangered Species Recovery: Conservation of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker."

3. A giant squid and an Ivory-bill are featured on a poster here.

4. Yet another blogger expresses some doubt here:

I noticed this on Google Maps while searching for signs of the allegedly rediscovered Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

More from Diane Deresienski

Here.

An excerpt:

There's [n]othing super exciting to report although there have been some promising/possible audible and one fleeting visual detection within the past week.

Double-knock box

Here.

I'd think it would be extremely difficult to strike that box hard enough to attract an Ivory-bill.

Media continues to back away from the "rediscovery"

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The rediscovery (if that's what it was) of the ivory-billed woodpecker in an Arkansas swamp made international headlines in 2005.

From Plenty magazine:

Ornithologists are also using this method to try to confirm the existence of the ivory-billed woodpecker (a.k.a. the Lord God bird), which many scientists still believe to be extinct.

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It's truly amazing that not long ago, so many people were fooled by the flimsiest of sound evidence.

Remember the "indisputable" editorial from the New York Times?

Also note this paragraph from a Dec '05 Birdforum post:

Jim Fitzpatrick plays the call notes of a known Ivory-billed from the Singer tract about 2-3 times and then he plays the call notes that were recorded by the Cornell Team. It matches it to a T! All of us experienced birders were sitting there looking at each other and could not believe what we were hearing. We whispered "those call notes nailed the ID as a IBWO call notes". All of us heard Blue Jays mimic other bird calls, we all know the White-breasted Nutatch call notes and we all gave a thumbs up as a Ivory-billed. What was funny is during lunch two birders who are very well known outside of Minnesota and tells us that tape recording is the reason why birders like David Sibley and others are keeping quiet and NOT butting heads anymore with the Cornell group. Hearing the tapes on a computer is a lot different than hearing the tapes in a auditorium. I cannot explain but it sounds better in a auditorium. Even the double knocks sound very convincing.

IBWO or PIWO scaling?

See this PDF file (4.9 Meg) from Bill Holliday (especially pages 24 and 25).

"not very promising"

Another version of the recent AP/Big Thicket search article is here.

Media coverage of Ivory-bill searches seems to be getting notably less enthusiastic these days.

Harrison vs Sibley (as told by Mary Scott)

An excerpt from Mary Scott's site:

Bobby shared his video of the bird, and did a frame-by-frame analysis of the Luneau video and David Sibley's drawings. Seems like David may have incorporated unmoving background shadows into the wing of the bird in his drawings.

Here's a related excerpt from Jack Hitt's NYT article:

...In Gallagher's book, you can find Harrison's initial reaction to Luneau's video: "It makes a bad Bigfoot movie look good."

Gallagher also tells the story of a ghost-chaser named Mary Scott, who had an Arkansas sighting a year before Gene Sparling, the kayaker, and was the first person to alert Gallagher to Sparling's account. Scott is a former lawyer who in midlife took up residence in a yurt near her parents' house in Long Beach, Calif. On one birding expedition, Scott took along a friend who knew an "ivory-bill whisperer." With the clairvoyant on the cellphone, the search party learned that the bird wanted to be seen but was troubled by the group's "energy." Scott eventually wandered off by herself and, she says, saw the bird. In fact, Scott has seen the bird quite a lot, so much so that she is openly scorned by other birders. "I must admit," Gallagher nevertheless writes, "I had come to believe strongly in her sighting."

Trace back the involvement of the Department of the Interior, Cornell University, the Nature Conservancy and a half-dozen other groups on the ground, and you'll find that all of them, arguably, owe their presence in Arkansas to a tent-dwelling courthouse dropout taking her guidance from an ivory-bill whisperer on a cellphone.

Pessimistic words from John Arvin

Here.

Jim Fitzpatrick to recount his "Ivory-bill" sighting

An excerpt from this link:

IN SEARCH OF THE IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER: Join birder Jim Fitzpatrick for lunch as he recounts his sighting of the elusive bird. Noon-2:30 p.m. Sun. $12. Adults only. An optional hike follows. Baker Near-Wilderness Settlement, 4001 County Rd. 24, 1 mile east of County Rd. 19 in Maple Plain. 763-559-6700.

(Remember, this was a 100-meter, naked-eye flyby that occurred in April 2004, right around the peak of the Arkansas hysteria.)

From The Grail Bird:

Jim said he was 98.5 percent sure that the bird was an ivory-bill. His attitude was, I just saw a bird I've never seen before. If it wasn't an ivory-bill, please tell me what it was; I'd like to know.

Apparently false rumor about Hill's book

An excerpt from this Birdforum post by MMinNY:

On a possibly more significant note, the shipping date for Ivorybill Hunters has been pushed back two months, until April 30. It's hard not to speculate about the reason for the delay.

I emailed Geoff Hill about this, and he gave me permission to post this quote from his reply:

Oxford is working toward a rapid publication of the book and I'm sure it will be out soon. It has not been postponed or pushed back.

IBWO-related entries in The Scientist blog

I just noticed the entries here, here, and here.

Some very interesting quotes

...from John Fitzpatrick here.

Here's one:

This is either a case of spectacular mass hallucination, or the bird is just remarkably wary.

"our evidence is absolute proof"

Here.

Update: Harrison points out that "more than 130" tickets were sold for his event.

Note this excerpt from the 2005 Texas Bigfoot conference site:

We had official attendance of over 500 for both days.