IBWO_Agnostic said:
Mike (aka Fishcrow),
Do you have any idea why no one initiated a 'blitz' into your area after you put the videos and other evidence online? (ignore this question if they did)
In Ark., when a volunteer would get an interesting encounter, the next day, Cornell would saturate the area with the available full-time staff in the hopes of a better sighting. I know you weren't affiliated with Cornell, but it seems that if someone is reporting multiple views over a couple of days, the prudent thing to do would be to send in a dozen observers to quietly work the area hoping to pin down the location of a roost/nest tree.
I know you were/are concerned about disturbance, but I would think Cornell has a pretty big interest in confirming IBWOs anywhere (not just AR).
There were actually several visitors. The day after I got the video, Van Remsen sent over two of his people. The initial plan was for one visitor, but his car was in the shop. So two of them came over. Since their boat was only big enough for one, I got someone else to help. I had previously gone into that area alone in my small kayak. That day there were four of us with my kayak, a medium sized canoe, and a huge, shiny, aluminum canoe. Due to the current and fallen trees, there was a certain amount of paddle clanging in the large canoe. On the way into the hot zone, a large bird flushed from near the bank (just like in several of my sightings in that area). I suspect that it was the bird, but nobody got a good look at it.
It was a big mistake taking all those people in there that day. I never had another definite sighting in the hot zone. I had been entering that area very quietly in my kayak. I would paddle upstream very early and then quietly drift down. This approach is minimally invasive, and I believe the ivorybills actually started to get used to my presence. On the sixth and final definite sighting (when I got the video), the bird flew away with less urgency than it had after the other times I flushed it. The length of that encounter was more than 12 minutes. I didn't see or hear it constantly during the encounter, but that's the length of time that elapsed between when it flushed and when I got the last of the video.
Other visitors included Jerome Jackson and another ornithologist. They arrived the day after a possible sighting in the hot zone. Since the other ornithologist isn't a U.S. citizen, I was not able to get them into Stennis. So we had to paddle a long distance to reach the hot zone and didn't arrive until late morning. One of the Arkansas searchers heard about my reports and came down to search. He spent some more than a week in the area. He's really good in the field and was very helpful. He was right behind me on March 10, when I had a possible sighting in the hot zone. He and another birder heard possible double raps (when you hear one from close range, there is no doubt, but it's hard to be certain about distant double raps).
There were several other visitors, but only one of them came before the last definite sighting. A veteran of previous Pearl searches and of the Big Woods searches visited twice. One of his visits was on Feb. 15. A few weeks prior to that, I had two sightings but then hit a long dry spell. This visitor suggested that I return to the area of the sightings because the habitat looked best in that area. The next day, I followed his advice and went deeper into that area. That's when I found the hot zone.
I believe it is a poor strategy to use a "blitz" after there is a report. This approach has failed repeatedly in the past. At best, you are only going to drive the birds away with this approach. Look what happened in Arkansas this year. They sent in lots of searchers and didn't have any luck. I believe my results this year have demonstrated that the best way to search is to go solo, be stealthy, and cover lots of ground. In a kayak, you don't really look like a human. You have a much lower profile.
I have not decided how I will handle things next year. I will perhaps bring in one other searcher at a time and split up. One of us will search one area, while the other searches another area. It is a mistake to use teams (even of just two people) because it is more invasive and there is always the temptation to talk.
