Ivory-Billed Woodpecker continued (1 Viewer)

[Welsh Peregrine]

Are you saying that there is unambiguous accepted film of Ivory-bills from the Singer Tract population that allow a measurement ( not an estimate) of wing beat frequency? If so, what is the published reference to this measurement?

 

[ZanderII]

PIWO after 2 secs post takoff is almost always ~ 4 to 5.8 HZ/s with noticable wing bounding to human eye. Wing binding in IB is in general not noticed by human eye but is there . Tobalske has anal;ysed and graphed out the LA IB video Good for IB not for PI on multiple variablres. See various papers. by Collins .

hope that helps

Great #scicom

 

[1TruthSeeker]

nasty comment by zander

Zander, here below, fixed the typos, etc. for Mr. Perfect. Less complaining........ more work on trying to explain to us using your own work, with your own evidence, and points concerning EXACTLY why the USFWS, IUCN, Nature Conservancy, AR RBC, Hill et al. many more accept the bird is alive or could be alive!

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IB very wary, Zander presents no evidence that PI is anywhere near as wary as IB

As we see Zander has no response except to obfuscate. After only a small amount of the available evidence presented on relative wariness of the subject species, Zander has strategically capitulated.... and quickly. Nothing wrong with cartoons as a defense when in retreat. What can a man do when staring defeat in the face but laugh. We must therefore conclude that the IB is the more wary of the 2. The world is right, after a momentary wobble.

Spider lady, Zander, others keep bringing up missed Q of some illustrious poster. I can not see various posters comments by design, this in response to their bad behavior, etc.

Regardless I will try to get to it someday. He/she must however put down soon an, intelligent, complete argument on why every piece of evidence is wrong W/O ignoring points already made by IB proponents here. Parsing out of small or perceived larger problems in flight mechanics, data, and its interpretations by me are mainly due to the questioner's poor understanding on the small modulating Hz range capabilities within a species. Modulations in HZ of Aves, is relatively small compared to the difference measured in the subject IB videos compared to PI.

If they can show example(s) of wing beat HZ varying more that 1 Standard Deviation (SD) from the usual ~ 5.5 Hz for PIs, or restated, and out of extreme curiosity, any PIWO that has a 40% higher HZ than all other known PIWO (after 3 second from a takeoff) that would be a precedent. This causing me to publicly apologize. This odd, out of known range for HZ value for a PI, would then possibly overlap the IB HZ seen in the Luneau (AR) and Collins (LA) videos. The Rhein Imperial Woodpecker paper, references and measurements certainly point to you having an impossible task in finding this super-charged PI. Do you at least see that? Imperial larger than an IBWO, at an 8.1 Hz (meaning the smaller cogener (IB) will have even a higher HZ= PI HZ than IB HZ > Imperial HZ. Simply amazing you think you are even in the same giant rugby stadium, let alone even between the try line and dead ball line? No, you did not score.

Think of the definition of SD when tying to supercharge PI HZ towards any attempt at IB heuristic HZ (but now established) .

If found though, please report and outliers above asap. Also like to see any, even 25 % in level flight Picidae higher variance on HZ, of same bird in one longer video or of different birds, but same species. Any of this will reopen the subject immediately, I agree.

Sadly the lonely, unanswered poster is likely just preening and will realize he/she can not articulate much on the subject or produce via search any of the needed videos despite there being many, many hundreds if not thousands to look through to find a black swan PI, and confirm 17 authors wrong, Collins,etc. Best of luck though, and as you say to me, hope you find this very rare creature,,,,,,get on it.

thanks

 

[Bismarck Honeyeater]

I might be at risk of stating that the Emperor has no clothes, but am I alone in not understanding any of TS1’s posts? I don’t just mean the (pseudo) science, obviously, but the actual words! I can’t read any of them and understand what he is saying.

TS1 - you need to break down what you are trying to say, without trying to make it sound clever. Just state the evidence without the waffle. If you have no evidence, that is evidence that the average Joe birder would accept as reasonable, then surely you just need to let this thread die, until such time as something indisputable and irrefutable materialises.

 

[1TruthSeeker]

I might be at risk of stating that the Emperor has no clothes, but am I alone in not understanding any of TS1’s posts? I don’t just mean the (pseudo) science, obviously, but the actual words! I can’t read any of them and understand what he is saying.

TS1 - you need to break down what you are trying to say, without trying to make it sound clever. Just state the evidence without the waffle. If you have no evidence, that is evidence that the average Joe birder would accept as reasonable, then surely you just need to let this thread die, until such time as something indisputable and irrefutable materialises.

Bismark ignore. Welsh Ignore. Can't learn anything from you; already know the way trolls and pseudoskeptics try and stop adult conversation.

 

[1TruthSeeker]

Are you saying that there is unambiguous accepted film of Ivory-bills from the Singer Tract population that allow a measurement ( not an estimate) of wing beat frequency? If so, what is the published reference to this measurement?

Exact details are in the various papers of all the data, please find all the HZ and all the evidence. The amazing thing is the result when Collins with several others, determined the speed of the subject bird. Damn if it isn't well outside the top speed ever recorded for any known PIWO. Can you tell me how that's possible? Sorry all, I hadn't mentioned that,. (on purpose waiting for the unvitiated, never have to wait long here, haha)

Also trailing white wing secondaries, white on neck seen dorsally, much more. Fast, perhaps it was the rarest of the rarest, a interfamilial hybrid. Peregrine X Pileated. What do you think? Ignore, sorry, I don't expect much..

 

[Deb Burhinus]

I might be at risk of stating that the Emperor has no clothes, but am I alone in not understanding any of TS1’s posts? I don’t just mean the (pseudo) science, obviously, but the actual words! I can’t read any of them and understand what he is saying.

You are not alone - it reads like the 2006 version of Google translate at times - the words are all in English yet the order and context is somewhat mystifying.

I do know what ‘Spider lady’ is - that’s me 😂 but I am not quite sure how I earned the epithet.

The Rhein Imperial Woodpecker references and measurements certainly point to you having an impossible task in finding this super-charged PI. Do you at least see that? Imperial larger that IBWO but at 8.1 simply amazing you think you even in the same giant rugby stadium let along the playing field. Think of the definition of SD.

This needs translating - I think it means there is no overlap between IB wing beats and those of Pileated and that all of us here are out of our league with the IB big boys. (Or something.)

I suppose if one blinds people with science with the intention of putting any evidence beyond the reach of ‘average Joe birder’ to understand, then of course, one can blame Joe birder’s lack of comprehension of the evidence rather than a lack of evidence per se as to why Joe birder does not accept the evidence as irrefutable.

 

[1TruthSeeker]

 

[1TruthSeeker]

 

[1TruthSeeker]

 

[1TruthSeeker]

 

[1TruthSeeker]

 

[bottomlands]

I am a searcher for the IB. Much of what 1TS and Motiheal before him have said is true. There are periodic IB sightings by very good birders, even respected ornithologists. They mostly stay silent or tell only close associates because of the likely blowback, as demonstrated in this thread. Some day there will be convincing evidence, but it is very difficult to get due to the habitat and IB behavior.

1TS is not Mike Collins. It is unfortunate that when some have called him Mike that 1TS does not correct them, even if he prefers to remain semi-anonymous.

 

[etudiant]

citation needed

Not sure where I saw the specifics, possibly in Imperial Dreams: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15803182-imperial-dreams
but the gist of the claim was that the cartel wanted to avoid having outsiders coming to their turf, so they incentivized the local peasants to kill the birds if they saw them.

 

[1TruthSeeker]

I wonder whether some 'ivorybill sightings' may be birds which are not woodpeckers at all. For example, is it possible that a goldeneye, a hooded merganser or a bufflehead, briefly seen flying in a flooded forest, could be taken for a big, black 'woodpecker' with a white patch on secondaries? What is interesting that no recent report describes a red head.

I like this type of examination and true, actual skepticism.

First there were scores of modern sightings of male IBs (red), the AR rediscovery IB was a male seen by many for many months. The sightings stopped which is weak, inferential evidence that an IB was present. In addition if you know your typical outbreeding mechanism in Picidae and the rather narrow, dead end strip of riparian corridor the bird frequented, you can surmise that the odds are heavy it had to be a male and was from the S. Pairs have also been seen several times including one of the best, long, impartial sightings of modern times in Pearl R. LA......only miles form where Collins and several also reported IBs, with evidence recently.

The two Anatidae you mention are never in even secondary forests, let alone primary forest. They are mostly salt or brackish water species, However a minor percentage of them winter and migrate via/using larger open bodies of freshwater (lakes, reservoirs, and very infrequently wider rivers of the S ). So rarely they can be seen flying high over forest canopy in the SE US and rarely low over rivers if they are relocating on the surface.

Bufflehead are minute, females, absolutely nothing like an IB in almost all ways so impossible to mistake for an IB unless you are really not birder, had a distant sighting and are a stringer. Males have more, but still slight resemblance, to an IB, again minute with white bellies and not a long body to wing ratio. Impossible to mistake for IB unless moving and binned at over .5 miles and you are pathetic.

Goldeneyes are the right size but are not elongated and the males body is basically 60% white. But have a white wing speculum that is in some of the right and wrong places on the wings for an IB. Regardless whizzing wing patterns can be mistaken, but if you are seeing white well on a male's wings at all that means you almost certainly shouldn't miss the white body and several other things that are not right for IB. Screw up probability is only slighter higher than the latter species.

Note none of the sighting were in this type of situations or that distant.

Now the Hooded Merganser, this bird has been seen by me/us in IBWO riverine habitat, and some swamps, beaver ponds, etc. But one must remember this bird is a diver and there are gators in their preferred interior forest habitat and Red-shouldered Hawks about so they are rarely in the interior forest water bodies but it does happen.

The females are impossible to push into an IB unless you are pathetic, lying or stretching it all at a great distance. In the S the resident Hoodies are smaller via expected clinal laws making the male only about 16 inches. But winter males from the N can be ~ 17 inches. Too small but that can be tricky. My impression is that males are almost immediately too small for the quarry. The male has no more that 25% black on its body with ruddy flanks and mostly off white body all the way to neck and is not shaped or proportioned like an IB or PI.

I have had several flying mergansers, suggestively in the air, level to the river but 5o -80 feet up, the hardest giving caudal views and forest as a backdrop. If you acquire them at 500 yards moving away you need to stay on it and it will almost certainly turn into a Hooded Merg. or a duck if its 5 seconds or more view and you know your flying Hooded Mergs. and ducks . I believe if it was an IB, a top, experienced birder, should be able to make the determination at this distance if they were on it for 5 seconds or more without lighting problems, assuming their bins are clean, contact lenses, glasses are clean and they are not really tired.

An unknown but suggestive bird at 1000 yards, flying fast on an incredible forest river gave me only a banking dorsal view going into a bend for ~ 7 seconds, and I called it 99% surely a Hooded Merganser. But it gave me a start and I yelled at team to get on this bird as i was binning it.

An average birder can mess a distant sighting up and make it into a poorly seen IB even in good conditions.

Study your ducks and mergansers if you are going to lead or train field teams and obviously if you will be on your own.

Regardless none of the IB sighting I have mentioned at BF have been of any distance over 200 yards although there may have been some in recent years that WERE NOT USED IN PAPERs, mainly because of distance.

ok

 

[Welsh Peregrine]

Ok, I really object to being accused of trolling; all I am trying to do is get to the bottom of your argument. I am a trained and published Biologist (in Malacology, rather than Ornithology) and a recently retired educator who has spent much time and effort trying to get people to express their ideas clearly so that others understand what they are saying. I have no axe to grind with regard to the existence or otherwise of this species, and when new evidence is presented, I am more than happy to change my position (as has recently happened with some of my Malacological work).
Does the EVIDENCE presented stack up? Firstly, continued survival of a species known to be in significant decline for over 75 years in a densely populated country. The balance of probability is against, so the evidence needed to overturn this hypothesis needs to be strong. Some of the evidence is suggestive, but nothing is conclusive. As for the wing beat frequency, the Ivory-Bill estimate is based on one sound recording which cannot be matched to a type of flight; suggestive but not provable. Pileated has been seen with this frequency so although unlikely cannot be eliminated.
The Florida feather is not proof of current survival; it is proof of former existence but when? Probably later than the Singer Tract, but scientifically it is always likely that any population persists for a time after its last proven sighting.
What is my view? Sadly, this is yet another species we have lost, by not taking effective action earlier. Were the Singer Tract individuals the very last? Probably not. Does the Luneau video confirm their existence? No, other explanations are possible. Are there still individuals alive? I do not think so, but I would LOVE to be proved wrong (and I would feel the same about Dodo, Great Auk, Po’ouli, Thylacine, Pink-necked Duck etc, etc). If I was advising on a species to search for with reasonable likelihood of success, Ivory-Bill would not be it; but if people are willing to put in the effort, good luck to them; just be aware that the quality of evidence required to convince skeptics is high. Good luck.

 

[Hauksen]

Hi Mike,

Regardless I will try to get to it someday.

I've been holding my breath since 2019.

He/she must however put down soon an, intelligent, complete argument on why every piece of evidence is wrong

I don't have to disprove the existence of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker any more than I have to disprove the existence of, say, the Yeti.

What I do is to criticize your evidence. Most of the "pieces of evidence" are rather weak to begin with, and it's a fallacy to assume that combining multiple bits of ambiguous evidence somehow succeeds in making the whole unambiguous.

So, from your article https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2330443X.2019.1637802 ...

"Tobalske obtained the flap rate statistics of the Pileated Woodpecker (5.2 Hz mean and 0.4 Hz standard deviation) from well-sampled data that were obtained in Montana (Tobalske 1996);"

Tobalske's 1996 data set on the Pileated Woodpecker consisted of merely 11 observed flights on a single location, and as far as I can tell, he makes no claims to having covered the full range of the Pileated Woodpecker's flight capabilities with this set.

So all you can really conclude from that is that the bird in the video under discussion did not behave like the Pileated Woodpecker(s) observed by Tobalske (https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/auk/v113n01/p0151-p0177.pdf ) - who only covered 1 location, 11 flights, in table 7, which deals with flight speed.

Tobalske's data does not show the variation of flap rate over flight speed, and you're using it as reference to an observation of a bird flying at a very different flight speed (that isn't even constant) than those observed by Tobalske.

You claimed back in 2019:

"In this case, the flap rate of the bird in the video is about ten standard deviations greater than the mean flap rate of the Pileated Woodpecker. That species may therefore be ruled out. "

You can only draw probabilistic conclusions from the standard deviations, so even in the best of cases, you could not rule out the Pileated Woodpecker with certainty.

To draw a numeric conclusion from the size of the standard deviation, you must know, or be able to assume with a high degree of confidence, that the observed values follow the normal (Gaussian) distribution ... which can usually be safely assumed if the results vary stochastically due to the influence of a sufficiently high number of small random influences.

However - that assumption goes out of the window the moment a systematic influence, such as the bird reacting to the power requirement for high-speed flight, enters the picture.

You're using the concept of standard deviation outside the context where it's applicable, and that's an elementary fallacy.

Being outside 10 sigma would be an impressive probability in the proper context (no certainty, even there), but in the case of the flap rate comparison, it doesn't mean anything because a bird's flap rate is, in approximation, arbitrarily variable depending on the requirements, and thus not a random influence.

I'm a bit surprised I have to point this out to you as it's really a statistics 101 issue.

You might want to check Tobalske's article here:

Biomechanics of bird flight

SUMMARY. Power output is a unifying theme for bird flight and considerable progress has been accomplished recently in measuring muscular, metabolic and aerodynamic power in birds. The primary flight muscles of birds, the pectoralis and supracoracoideus, are designed for work and power output...

jeb.biologists.org

Any individual flying at a higher speed than its Vmp, the characteristic speed for minimum power required (which is species dependend, and amenable to statistical analysis) will have to generate more propulsive power.

Tobalske's earlier measurements of woodpecker flap rates most likely captured them at speeds in the region of Vmp, as is evident from his descriptions of the capturing process.

Quite obviously, these flap rates don't apply to situations with a much higher power requirement, for example the top speed indicated at the right-hand side of Tobalske's U-shaped power graph in the linked article, or a flushed bird accelerating away from an approaching observer.

Sadly the lonely, unanswered poster

Hehe, you never get lonely with all those sock puppets to comfort you, do you? :-D

Check the "likes" under our respective posts to see who's the real loner out here ... not that I care much, but it seems important to you.

Regards,

Henning

 

[jenks86]

Not sure where I saw the specifics, possibly in Imperial Dreams: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15803182-imperial-dreams
but the gist of the claim was that the cartel wanted to avoid having outsiders coming to their turf, so they incentivized the local peasants to kill the birds if they saw them.

citation needed

The book may mention "drug cartels", but according to Wikipedia it definitely has a passage about logging companies giving poison to locals to smear on communal feeding trees and this likely causing extinction.

Imperial woodpecker - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Jonno52]

I am a searcher for the IB. Much of what 1TS and Motiheal before him have said is true. There are periodic IB sightings by very good birders, even respected ornithologists. They mostly stay silent or tell only close associates because of the likely blowback, as demonstrated in this thread. Some day there will be convincing evidence, but it is very difficult to get due to the habitat and IB behavior.

1TS is not Mike Collins. It is unfortunate that when some have called him Mike that 1TS does not correct them, even if he prefers to remain semi-anonymous.

Ah, so it's a conspiracy. If the species were found to be extant, I think birders and ornithologists would be delighted, and happy to provide photographs and other evidence. I can't see why "blowback" in a BF thread would discourage them.

I see you joined today. Welcome to Bird Forum!

 

[cajanuma]

1TS is not Mike Collins. It is unfortunate that when some have called him Mike that 1TS does not correct them, even if he prefers to remain semi-anonymous.

FWIW, yes I think we can all safely assume that 1TS (and his other aliases) is not Mike Collins, who unlike 1TS can express himself intelligibly in writing