London Birder said:
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:clap:
Hi London Birder, you know, its sometimes hard to know what you are clapping. AnywayI'm glad you're enjoying the thread!
One of the problems of this thread is that there is rarely if ever any new information coming to light these days. I signed on to the Cornell "updates" e-mail list and to be honest there has been virtually nothing of worth on that (with the exception of the aberrant PIWOs perhaps). On here we are left with "I know that someone reliable in Florida, knows someone who met someone who saw an IBWO" type reports, with the latest being a naked eye report from a bus of one on a telegraph pole! :eek!:
I think its fair to say that most of the people on this thread are waiting/hoping for something much better.
In the meantime, having done the Luneau video to death, we are left with Cinclodes' videos and i agree with (whoever it was I can't remember) that there hasn't been much discussion of the substance of it. I've seen some people saying that fishcrow.com is a wind-up but I don't believe that.
However, I am not convinced that the bird is an IBWO.
Here are some (unscientific) points to start the discussion if anyone is interested:
1] the quality of the video is poor (it doesn't matter why, canoe, lighting, terrain etc etc, its not a criticism just an observation) and so it is hard to see many aspects of the bird. So my first impression is that you (I) can't identify this bird from the video with any confidence but ..
2] the pale panel on the secondaries of the bird's right wing as it flys to the right is very interesting, but how can we be sure it isn't reflected light? bearing in mind that this feature doesn't appear in any other part of the video clips posted on fishcrow.com as far as i can see
3] much has been made about head shape - yes the bird perched on the tree in profile looks like it has a long thin neck, however how much of that is due to it being almost in sillhouette ie, does the light coming from behind make the neck look thinner than it is?
4] bill shape/length - how many pixels are we talking here? - I can see that it has got a bill but that's it for me
5] posture - I don't see many PIWOs because I live in the UK - so when I saw one this Spring adopt the same posture as the fishcrow bird 5 times in one sighting (each time it stopped as it slowly shimmied up a tree after drumming) I ruled this out as a diagnostic feature. if I can see PIWO do this in one sighting then they must do it often
6] peeping out from behind a tree, PIWOs don't do this - I don't buy this. I'm pretty sure that all woodpeckers do this some times as well as squirrels, nuthatches, (choupique) etc etc
7] flight action from one tree to another - I can't comment because I haven't seen enough PIWOs
8] flight action when leaving the tree - I'll leave that up to others too - its too quick and blurry for me
So, I think it could be an IBWO and it could be a PIWO -does that start the ball rolling for anyone?