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Ivory-billed Woodpecker (formerly updates) (3 Viewers)

Jane Turner said:
I disagree - its more important to see enough to know if this bird is IBWO or leucistic Pileated.

In any case this latest sighting was on the edge of a camping site and car park - not exactly undisturbed virgin forest!

TRE329 described the camping area on ibwo.net:

I do not how frequent the use of that camping area is,there are some sizeable ruts in the road getting back to it.I should mention as well that all of the campsites at Wattensaw are extremely primitive usually being just a graveled area off the main road.Also of all of the campsites along this road this one is 300+ yards off the road.

So it's not exactly the kind of place families go to and roast marshmallows - probably just used seasonally by hunters.
 
Jane Turner said:
I disagree - its more important to see enough to know if this bird is IBWO or leucistic Pileated.

In any case this latest sighting was on the edge of a camping site and car park - not exactly undisturbed virgin forest!
I forgot about that. If it is convincingly the IBWO, it certainly won't be a camping site and car park for long!
 
emupilot said:
Although the skeptical view gets harder to maintain with each good sighting, at some point there will be a need for "scientific proof" to keep the ball moving forward on conservation of the species.

Nothing has chaged...This latest sighting just confirms what we already knew from TRE's previous sighting. There is a large Woodpecker with white in the trailing edge of the wing in Arkansas.

The bird may, as described, have no red on the head. Alternatively the view was inadequate to distinguish red from black. ie no red was seen as opposed to ne red was present. We are in the same position as with Jesse's record. The view was not good enough to see a large white bill, so it isn't safe to assume that no red was present on the head. It takes a much better view to confirm the absence of a feature than the presence of one.


Hopefully TRE will see the bird again and nail its ID.
 
Jane Turner said:
Nothing has chaged...This latest sighting just confirms what we already knew from TRE's previous sighting. There is a large Woodpecker with white in the trailing edge of the wing in Arkansas.

The bird may, as described, have no red on the head. Alternatively the view was inadequate to distinguish red from black. ie no red was seen as opposed to ne red was present. We are in the same position as with Jesse's record. The view was not good enough to see a large white bill, so it isn't safe to assume that no red was present on the head. It takes a much better view to confirm the absence of a feature than the presence of one.


Hopefully TRE will see the bird again and nail its ID.

I agree with you that it is important to confirm the sighting with a photograph, but between the a) black head and crest, b) presence (briefly) of two such birds in the first sighting, and c) the bird in the first sighting saying "kent" just like the original Tanner recording, I think it is a real stretch to fit a leucistic Pileated to his sightings. That doesn't mean the hypothesis of Ivory-bill has been proven, though, and I have my fingers crossed that TRE will get a photo or even find a nest.
 
A photograph would be nice...but a description that could only be an Ivory-bill is still missing. And of course I disagree, its not a stretch at all just now to fit Pileated with white in the secondaries to both sightings. The second bird was undescribed beyond being a large Woodpecker wasn't it?

Now should TRE get lucky and see the dorsal stripe well enough to be sure where it goes, see the bill/eye, see the head well enough lit and for long enough to know without any doubt that there is no red, and be able to describe exactly which feathers in the wing are all white or partly white, then this enters a new phase.

Fortunately it appears that TRE is willing and able to take field notes. This is a good thing!
 
Jane Turner said:
A photograph would be nice...but a description that could only be an Ivory-bill is still missing. And of course I disagree, its not a stretch at all just now to fit Pileated with white in the secondaries to both sightings. The second bird was undescribed beyond being a large Woodpecker wasn't it?

Now should TRE get lucky and see the dorsal stripe well enough to be sure where it goes, see the bill/eye, see the head well enough lit and for long enough to know without any doubt that there is no red, and be able to describe exactly which feathers in the wing are all white or partly white, then this enters a new phase.

Fortunately it appears that TRE is willing and able to take field notes. This is a good thing!

You're right in that I guess I haven't heard him describe the second bird to say it looked like the first (just that it was black and white), but a black head (much less a black crest) and saying "kent" are not at all consistent with a leucistic Pileated. I understand your point about perhaps not seeing the head well enough (though TRE might disagree), but a Pileated, no matter what coloration, would not say "kent". Also, if a Pileated's secondaries were white, wouldn't the white meet the white wing linings? That would rule out a leucistic Pileated because there would be no black separating the white leading edge from the white secondaries.

By your standard, we appear to have already entered a new phase with Tyler Hicks' sighting of Christmas Eve. He had an excellent view of all field marks, and was led to the bird by both "kent" calls and double-knocks (and others heard kents and double-knocks as well). Hopefully, the reason his field notes haven't been released is because they've been submitted to the Florida bird records committee.
 
emupilot said:
By your standard, we appear to have already entered a new phase with Tyler Hicks' sighting of Christmas Eve. He had an excellent view of all field marks, and was led to the bird by both "kent" calls and double-knocks (and others heard kents and double-knocks as well). Hopefully, the reason his field notes haven't been released is because they've been submitted to the Florida bird records committee.


I assumed that until I read the "millisecond" line. Hard to rule out a reflection as opposed to white in a millisecond... and yes lets hope they have been submitted.
 
emupilot said:
Also, if a Pileated's secondaries were white, wouldn't the white meet the white wing linings? That would rule out a leucistic Pileated because there would be no black separating the white leading edge from the white secondaries.

That would depend on whether the secondaries were white along their full length or black at their bases. - why its important to be sure just what is white and were.

Hopefully all will be revealed.
 
Jane Turner said:
That would depend on whether the secondaries were white along their full length or black at their bases. - why its important to be sure just what is white and were.

Hopefully all will be revealed.

Has such a pattern EVER been documented in Pileated Woodpecker, extending into the primaries no less? I don't think we're really disagreeing with each other, as positive confirmation is needed, but when a Pileated needs to have potentially multiple plumage abnormalities, which aren't necessarily known to exist alone, and then even sound like an Ivory-bill, the probability of that hypothesis approaches zero.
 
Two Thousand Milliseconds

Jane Turner said:
I assumed that until I read the "millisecond" line. Hard to rule out a reflection as opposed to white in a millisecond... and yes lets hope they have been submitted.

Didn't Geoff Hill state that the camera "focused instead of taking photos during the couple of seconds the bird was in front of him"?
Now I'm no mathematician, but isn't that two thousand times longer than a mere millisecond?
 
"Millisecond" reference

salar53 said:
Didn't Geoff Hill state that the camera "focused instead of taking photos during the couple of seconds the bird was in front of him"?
Now I'm no mathematician, but isn't that two thousand times longer than a mere millisecond?


Here is the reference to the "millisecond".
“I came around the bend, and there on a tupelo tree, about two meters off the water, was a female Ivory-billed woodpecker,” Hicks told The Star. “She looked at me and I looked at her and in a millisecond she was gone.”

He described a surreal moment held in abeyance when the finest details grew mammoth. The light was bad, the day was overcast, but the bill of the woodpecker was a brilliant white and her colors -- dark head, white markings on the back, a white trailing edge in flight — all hammered themselves into his memory, for good.

I'm sure Hicks regrets using the word, as skeptics then keyed on it although it obviously does not represent the amount of time he saw the bird.
 
emupilot said:
Here is the reference to the "millisecond".


I'm sure Hicks regrets using the word, as skeptics then keyed on it although it obviously does not represent the amount of time he saw the bird.
Very few people have a good grasp of time under stressful situations. When you're in a car accident things go very slowly. When someone says millisecond, it's almost a figure of speech. When they say 5 seconds it may only be two. Ask anyone in an earthquake how long it lasted, invariably it seems forever.
 
Jane Turner said:
Now should TRE get lucky and see the dorsal stripe well enough to be sure where it goes, see the bill/eye, see the head well enough lit and for long enough to know without any doubt that there is no red, and be able to describe exactly which feathers in the wing are all white or partly white, then this enters a new phase.

Fortunately it appears that TRE is willing and able to take field notes. This is a good thing!

While I concur that it is a good thing that TRE is taking notes, I hate to say it but a description of the quality you desire would almost definitely be blown off as "too good to be an actual observation". Need I remind anyone that seeing all the field marks in the field is very unlikely?
 
humminbird said:
Need I remind anyone that seeing all the field marks in the field is very unlikely?

So where does that leave us? With no photo and unlikelyness of noting obvious field marks like colour of bill and the presence/absence of red on head what would be the minimum number of features that would need to be observed to clinch Id? Distinguish from other possibilities?
 
Jane Turner said:
I disagree - its more important to see enough to know if this bird is IBWO or leucistic Pileated.


"leucistic Pileated" ?

Funny how that leucistic Pileated had both the correct under-wing and upper-wing patterns for an IBWO.

Oh, and how about that a blue jay just happenrd along to make it's infamous 'kent' sound at just the right moment in time, or was it a nuthatch instead?

I find it very strange that all of these field marks and sounds came from a 'leucistic Pileated' instead of an IBWO. That sure is one strange "Pileated" if you ask me!
 
humminbird said:
While I concur that it is a good thing that TRE is taking notes, I hate to say it but a description of the quality you desire would almost definitely be blown off as "too good to be an actual observation". Need I remind anyone that seeing all the field marks in the field is very unlikely?


Its strange how people can see and record the fieldmarks of much more difficult challenging species, identification-wise, well enough to have them accepted by national committees.

With a cool mind, it would take a few seconds to be sure about the dorsal stripe on a perched bird... see the bill in a couple of orientations to be sure its not a reflection. Cetainty about a lack of red on the head might take a little longer, and the extent of white in the wing would be the hardest, requiring a lot of concentration as the bird flew.

I'd leave the debate about whether a description was too good to be true to others. In any case its really not an issue yet is it!
 
timeshadowed said:
I find it very strange that all of these field marks and sounds came from a 'leucistic Pileated' instead of an IBWO. That sure is one strange "Pileated" if you ask me!

TME's description says that he did not hear any sounds from the bird doesn't it - last line!
 
humminbird said:
Need I remind anyone that seeing all the field marks in the field is very unlikely?
It is much more likely if you are looking at an IBWO than if you are looking at something else. And of course it is very likely if you get prolonged views, as Jane has pointed out.
 
I see Pileateds frequently, and the red crest is a prominent feature that is extremely hard to miss (even in a fleeting glimpse) at 100 feet, let alone approximately 40. But let's go back to the notes; TRE described "a black very pronounced crest." If he was able to observe observe a pronounced crest, I see no way that he could have missed the red, had any red been present. Although he does not describe the light conditions in his notes, I think he's met your criterion with regard to the crest. And a partially leucistic Pileateed with an all black crest would be anomalous indeed.


Jane Turner said:
A photograph would be nice...but a description that could only be an Ivory-bill is still missing. And of course I disagree, its not a stretch at all just now to fit Pileated with white in the secondaries to both sightings. The second bird was undescribed beyond being a large Woodpecker wasn't it?

Now should TRE get lucky and see the dorsal stripe well enough to be sure where it goes, see the bill/eye, see the head well enough lit and for long enough to know without any doubt that there is no red, and be able to describe exactly which feathers in the wing are all white or partly white, then this enters a new phase.

Fortunately it appears that TRE is willing and able to take field notes. This is a good thing!
 
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