Today's links

1. An article on an Apalachicola search is here.

2. "Words of Wisdom" from The Choctawhatchee Search blog here.

3. Tim Gallagher will speak again on April 16. An excerpt from this link:

An irrefutable sighting by Gallagher and a colleague in February 2004 quickly led to the largest search ever mounted to find a rare bird, as researchers fanned out across the bayou to document this most iconic of birds.

4. Seanster weighs in here.

5. "The Nature Conservancy and the Ivory-billed Woodpecker are over" here.

More than six pixels

The BirdChick has some new Pileated Woodpecker photos here.

Sound "evidence" and grant money

An excerpt from page 170 of Geoff Hill's book:

...Between the listening stations and video recorder sound captures, our goal was to accrue so much sound evidence in our small study area that it could not be dismissed. Without a video, we would not be able to call our results "definitive", "irrefutable", or "proof", but we could at least rise to the level of "compelling" or "highly suggestive" and justify getting enough grant money to conduct a follow-up search. Dan's sound lab was absolutely key to this plan, and I was extremely encouraged by what his group was compiling.

I'm sure that equally "compelling" sound evidence could also be gathered at countless locations in the northern United States.

Harry LeGrand post

Here.

Hill on IBWO "site tenacity"

An excerpt from page 177 of Geoff Hill's book:

...Throughout this first field season we had the mistaken idea that if an ivorybill was flushed from a spot, then it was gone from that spot for good. We made no effort to stake out specific locations where we encountered ivorybills. Our listening station data, however, indicated that ivorybills hung out in relatively small areas for days at a time and apparently returned to such favored spots even after they encountered a person. Unfortunately, Dan didn't discover this site tenacity until well after our spring search was over.

Today's links

1. Some updates from WorldTwitch are here.

2. More from Blue Crab Boulevard is here.

3. "More than Just Ivory-bills in the Choctawhatchee" here.

4. Bobby Harrison will speak again on April 11. Check out the details here.

More from Mennill

Here.

All night recordings NOT analyzed?

Note these key excerpts from Hill's book (pages 161 and 165):

I've already described how we used seven listening stations, each of which collected 24 hours of recordings.
...
Within a couple of weeks this team of part-time screeners was able to crank through about 72 hours of audio recordings per day. This rate of audio analysis was almost enough to keep up with what was coming in from the field, and if windy and rainy days were skipped, they could keep up.

Note that analyzing all 24 hours from each of 7 listening stations would require the team to "crank through" 168 hours of audio recordings per day; also note that quite a few of these "false positive" toots and taps might be produced at night.