Ivory-Billed Woodpecker continued (1 Viewer)

[bottomlands]

Please don't this as an insult and I know it is 'different' as IBWO was a legitimate species but there are thousands of sightings of bigfoot - images, video, recordings and even DNA evidence see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigfoot

I'm sure none of us think these are credible but people have written academic papers about it and there is a mountain of 'evidence'. Hence why proof is needed.

I think it is just a stupid comparison. I haven't heard of any degreed and experienced biologists claiming to have seen sasquatch. We have had quite a list of respected ornithologists and birders who believe they have seen IB. And regardless, it is a RED HERRING. It is an irrelevant diversion away from your unsupported claim that IB are extinct.

 

[bottomlands]

I don’t see the need for anyone on here to prove the extinction of a species that has not CONVINCINGLY been seen for (?)50+ years. I do see the need for those that purport to believe in the continued existence of IBWO to provide CONVINCING evidence of such.

The sound recordings, fuzzy videos, anecdotal accounts and ‘there’s masses of habitat, they surely still exist’ claims, are not cutting it for me. If one has to dissect and examine minute pieces of ‘evidence’ in order to then piece them altogether and suggest they are enough, I’m afraid one is mistaken.

All anyone wants is one unequivocally obvious IBWO photograph (complete with EXIF etc.) and we will all HAPPILY accept the premise of continued existence.

I wait with extremely un-baited breath.

You don't think a claim of extinction should be treated similarly to a claim of persistence? I think both should be subject to questioning and require evidence. If claims can be made without supporting evidence, then they are all equal in meaning nothing at all.

 

[Bismarck Honeyeater]

Okay, what other ways could a sighting be confirmed or verified?

None.

For a species that is considered to be extinct, the very LEAST confirmation would be a photograph, preferably many, preferably video. Is that unreasonable?

I think it is just a stupid comparison. I haven't heard of any degreed and experienced biologists claiming to have seen sasquatch. We have had quite a list of respected ornithologists and birders who believe they have seen IB. And regardless, it is a RED HERRING. It is an irrelevant diversion away from your unsupported claim that IB are extinct.

I’m not prepared to go back through the whole thread, but I don’t think anyone here is saying that IBWO is extinct (very hard to prove a negative). However, there is absolutely no evidence that they are not extinct (and it’s way easier to prove a positive).

 

[Bismarck Honeyeater]

You don't think a claim of extinction should be treated similarly to a claim of persistence? I think both should be subject to questioning and require evidence. If claims can be made without supporting evidence, then they are all equal in meaning nothing at all.

There is no proof of the existence of IBWO, that’s my evidence.
Prove me wrong...(please. I will issue the most profound and sincere apology for doubting the believers)
I rest my case.

 

[bottomlands]

I’m not prepared to go back through the whole thread, but I don’t think anyone here is saying that IBWO is extinct (very hard to prove a negative). However, there is absolutely no evidence that they are not extinct (and it’s way easier to prove a positive).

Well, you're wrong. Read the thread or don't, but several people here have stated emphatically that IB are extinct. And you're wrong about evidence that the bird is not extinct. There is a lot of it, but I don't consider any of it to be absolute proof positive.

 

[bottomlands]

There is no proof of the existence of IBWO, that’s my evidence.
Prove me wrong...(please. I will issue the most profound and sincere apology for doubting the believers)
I rest my case.

According to at least one person here, unconvincing evidence is not evidence. Using that rule, you have no evidence.

 

[Larry Sweetland]

We have had quite a list of respected ornithologists and birders who believe they have seen IB.

I'm sorry to say that I don't believe you. As I mentioned upthread, if those 'respected birders' were respected by birders, there would be loads of birders constantly looking for it. And apparently there aren't.

 

[Deb Burhinus]

In fairness to 1Truthseekers efforts in posting all these recordings and links, and in an attempt to show willing to look again at more of the elements of evidence that has been accumulated (with the proviso my experience of Pileated is limited to just a few trips to the US and my audio/visual experience of IB is a big fat zero 🙂) yet again, I find myself looking at what is to me, inconclusive material:

I listened to all the DK posted up thread - it took a while and some I listened to twice or more. Apart the recordings that are clearly DKs (I have no idea though if these are solely diagnostic for IB) there are quite a few recordings included that are just white noise with indistinct sound and there are some that are double knocks but it sounds as if they are the loudest part of a longer sequence that perhaps hasn’t been picked up by the mics. I also have no idea how to verify/judge the original speed of the recording. The DKs are examples of ‘evidence‘ that forms part of the portfolio put forward by the searchers but I am not sure, due to the quality of the recordings, the processing, and my own limited experience of Pileated, whether I am hearing overlap.

I picked out a few recordings of Pileated knocks from Xenocanto to illustrate what I mean;

1. XC461531 @ 0.39

XC461531 Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus)

www.xeno-canto.org

2. XC210949 @ 0.21

XC210949 Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus)

swamp, faint calls and tapping from a pair in a tree, I didn't see which one called

www.xeno-canto.org

3. XC149508

XC149508 Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus)

www.xeno-canto.org

@
0.10
0.16
0.54
1.10
1.30
1.41

Interestingly, the above knocks were not drum rolls but seemed, in some cases, to be territorial squabbles or anyway judging from the accompanying vocals, some form of direct exchange with another bird in the vicinity. Clearly, agitation produces it’s own repertoire of vocals in IB as noted of the Allen & Kent calls, so as in knocks too? And as for Pileated also? In addition, as the video below shows, excavating for food can produce single loud knocks in succession and in twos and threes albeit with temporal spacing inconsistent some of with the uploaded putative IB DKs.

“Allen and Kellogg recorded kent calls from Ivory-
billed Woodpeckers in Louisiana in 1935 (Tanner
1942). These calls were recorded from a breeding
pair at their nest and the vocalizing birds appeared
to have been agitated by the humans making the
recordings”

I have no doubt that the IB searchers will have a lot of scientific arguments based on differentials in decibels, temporal distances, tonal qualities etc to shout down any confusion or doubts that I might express and I don’t have the knowledge base to refute such a response but to my unqualified ear, I am struggling to rule out Pileated knocks on some of the recordings - or at least, some appear ambiguous even as DKs at all maybe those better qualified ‘sceptics’ can do better to validate the DKs as IBs?

Another element of the evidence ‘portfolio’ is the measurements of fresh perimeters around boreholes entrances and cavities as indicating ‘recent’ IB activity.
eg here https://www.researchgate.net/figure...tightly-adhering-bark-that-has_fig2_291692809

I came across an excellent video on Youtube and watched this bird for 20 minutes or so, enlarging the perimeter of an existing borehole/nest cavity to access larva/bugs living within the flesh of the tree. Others may find it fascinating in its own right but for me, it injects another example of the level of ambiguity in the claims IB is extant vis a vis recent signs of excavation in the form of larger than Pileated sized cavities but rather IB sized boreholes/perimeters and thus being ‘evidence’ of IB activity.

Some stills from the above video

 

[Bismarck Honeyeater]

Well, you're wrong. Read the thread or don't, but several people here have stated emphatically that IB are extinct. And you're wrong about evidence that the bird is not extinct. There is a lot of it, but I don't consider any of it to be absolute proof positive.

I think you have made my case

 

[foresttwitcher]

bottomlands, genuine question and I have no real axe to grind either way on IBWO continuing existence or not, although it seems unlikely to me (personal opinion). But it has been asked on this or other similar threads: why are you and the other recent posters so obsessed with persuading those on a forum with an international and, I think, predominantly European-centric membership, on the continued existence of the species?

 

[bottomlands]

I'm sorry to say that I don't believe you. As I mentioned upthread, if those 'respected birders' were respected by birders, there would be loads of birders constantly looking for it. And apparently there aren't.

Does well-respected connote fame and influence over there?

 

[bottomlands]

bottomlands, genuine question and I have no real axe to grind either way on IBWO continuing existence or not, although it seems unlikely to me (personal opinion). But it has been asked on this or other similar threads: why are you and the other recent posters so obsessed with persuading those on a forum with an international and, I think, predominantly European-centric membership, on the continued existence of the species?

Obsession? I've been here for about three days. And I had no idea this was a European forum. How was I supposed to know? All I did was google ivory-billed woodpecker and followed links to see anything new I'd not seen before.

 

[PYRTLE]

Obsession? I've been here for about three days. And I honestly had no idea this was a European forum. How was I supposed to know?

It is not a European forum; just calm down and read foresttwitcher's post again - predominantly. There are contributors from all over the planet. They will answer for themselves, but for me the reference of obsession is very likely the number and frequency of postings.

Just spend a while to navigate the various forums and gallery and you'll quickly see that it is indeed global - perhaps another reason to suggest you are preoccupied with IBW and nothing else, you're decision obviously.

I know of two experienced and well known UK birders who have claimed Middle Spotted and Black Woodpeckers fly in off the sea ( both claims from the county of Kent ).....both claims rejected even though the observers were well versed in seeing them throughout Europe.

To conclude - both birders believe they identified a species but that species is still not accepted as having occurred by the relevant committee. Why? No acceptable evidence.

 

[Stuart Goodwin]

Another person who isn't another person, but ...

http://britishbirds.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/V104_N05_P261%e2%80%93265_A.pdf

Tufted Puffin - first for Britain, photographed and 7 observers. Of course, if it had been a Great Auk claimed and photographed that would have been interesting! ;-)

Morning.

That sighting/ record was the example that immediately came to mind. On my old patch as well.

Regards

 

[Hauksen]

Hi,

Of course, you could bring evidence that shows that the underlying assumption that wing beat frequency of a bird is independent of its power requirement at any moment. That - and only that - would address my main criticism.

Here is additional supporting material to the IB identification , the flight sequences of the Imperial Woodpecker.

As I very clearly pointed out, there is only one way to address my main criticism. You haven't addressed it, at all.

You have also dodged this question:

So what are your credentials?

Remember, you're posing as an expert here ... you can either enjoy the advantage of anonymity, or the advantage of being able leveraging your reputation (if you've earned one), but not both at the same time.

Regards,

Henning

 

[Hauksen]

Hi Deb,

Searchers seem to define “evidence” as anything and everything that might suggest recent IB activity, including (uncorroborated, unconsciously biased?) eye witness accounts, undifferentiated data sets, inconsistent results rationalised with novel aspects of IB ecology, re-analysis of historical evidence (mis?)applied to contemporary data etc then using the accumulation rationale, to arrive at their ‘proven’ hypothesis:

”Any one of our lines of evidence could be dismissed as coincidental or a mistake, but together, these observations, collected by experienced ornithologists, suggest that Ivory-billed Woodpeckers may be present in the Florida panhandle.“

(PDF) Evidence Suggesting that Ivory-billed Woodpeckers (Campephilus principalis) Exist in Florida

PDF | The Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) disappeared from the forests of southeastern North America in the early 20th Century and for... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

The advantage of this, when it comes to an internet forum discussion, is that you can evade any question regarding the validity of any piece of evidence by just pointing towards some other piece of (just as questionable) evidence.

(And if all else fails, forum names just vanish, and are replaced by "new people" from the obviously very large community of die-hard Ivory-Billed Woodpecker guys ... who "have only been here for three days", yet seamlessly blend in as if they've been arguing on this forum forever.)

That leads to the kind of circular discussion we're seeing here ... I'm trying to get one single point addressed since well over a year, with maybe a thousand posts on the topic, and so far, it has always been dodged.

Regards,

Henning

 

[Hauksen]

Hi Deb,

Another element of the evidence ‘portfolio’ is the measurements of fresh perimeters around boreholes entrances and cavities as indicating ‘recent’ IB activity.
eg here https://www.researchgate.net/figure...tightly-adhering-bark-that-has_fig2_291692809

I came across an excellent video on Youtube and watched this bird for 20 minutes or so, enlarging the perimeter of an existing borehole/nest cavity to access larva/bugs living within the flesh of the tree. Others may find it fascinating in its own right but for me, it injects another example of the level of ambiguity in the claims IB is extant vis a vis recent signs of excavation in the form of larger than Pileated sized cavities but rather IB sized boreholes/perimeters and thus being ‘evidence’ of IB activity.

Very good point!

Additionally, this article by Paul W. Sykes Jr. argues that it's impossible to ascribe foraging marks on trees reliably to Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers:

A Personal Perspective on Searching for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker: A 41-Year Quest

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2039&context=usgsstaffpub

This is a fantastic account by an IBWO searcher who has spent over 4 decades looking and is also a great digest of the pitfalls and politics of the whole situation. Well worth perusing

After conducting several double-blind tests measuring
the widths of bill marks made by large woodpeckers in bark
scaling, excavation of nesting/roosting cavities, pits, and furrows
on trees and examining the data, Steve Holzman and I
found that the idea one might be able to determine whether
such marks were made by either a pileated or an ivory-billed
woodpecker was not possible as originally had been thought.
There was too much variability in taking repeated measurements
of the same bill mark by the same person or between
different persons to be able to distinguish between the two
species. There was also too much variability within marks
made between individuals of the same species to be useful.
Bill-mark widths also varied between tree species and state
of tree decay, and there was a lot of variation in the shape and
depth of the bill tips of specimens in museum collections both
within and between the two species. So much for “pipe dreaming”—
we had no smoking gun.

Regards,

Henning

 

[Larry Sweetland]

Does well-respected connote fame and influence over there?

No, exactly the opposite in fact. It connotes enough respect for their reliability at field identification among American birders (perhaps internationally too), to result in a large number of American birders believing that the species is likely to be extant.

And how will we know when a number of "respected birders" have claimed that they are confident that they've seen one? All of a sudden lots of birders will be down there looking for it, because they will believe it is there, and because it's probably the bird in the country that they'd most like to see. As far as I'm aware this is not what is happening.

 

[Farnboro John]

So evidence you find unconvincing is not evidence?

I agree that the evidence is "not proven" for both persistence and extinction. Shouldn't the default for such a situation be "status unknown"?

Why does the IBWO faith camp need a "way out"? I really don't know what you mean.

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to convince you that IB persist. Why must I provide that photo or video? Are you lumping me in with those trying to convince you that the species is extant? If so, why?

Let's give our positions in succinct statements. Mine is: Evidence is not conclusive for persistence or extinction. Yours appears to be: The evidence for persistence does not convince me, therefore the species must be extinct. If that is not accurate, please correct me.

Its not just down to me. On this and other IBWO threads (have you read them all?) what is claimed by 1TS and others to be incontrovertible evidence has been completely and repeatedly shown to be nothing of the sort. Kent calls are made by common extant species. Double knocks are made by common extant species. Beak marks are variable within and across species so that no beak mark can be said to be incontrovertibly from an IBWO but could come from a common extant species. One set of photographs has been shown to be fake (a clear parallel with the faked up Sasquatch film) and the very best of other photograph and video offered is at best inconclusive. There is at least a suggestion that the famous innermost secondary was pinched from a museum specimen. As Deb has just pointed out, size of cavities is an irrelevance.

In addition to all that, the IBWO cult have increasingly made unreasonable claims that IBWO - an approachable, easy to locate species - has changed its habits so completely that it is now impossible to find even by people looking hard for it. No convincing reasons have been advanced for this hypothesis, let alone evidence that it has occurred.

The outcome is beyond question that, without incontrovertible evidence of presence from the last seven decades - a period far longer than the lifespan of the longest lived woodpecker - the logical conclusion is that IBWO are not being found because they are not there.

This of course is not satisfactory to the IBWO faith camp, who get very angry when their house of cards is knocked down (double-knocked down?) Their activity on BF amounts, in between getting very shouty that inadequate evidence is adequate, to demands that people with independent thought and the capability to construct their own logical argument, instead should "believe".

But this is not a question for belief, for or against. The only way the IBWO cult can convince the IBWO sceptics that IBWO still exists is to provide incontrovertible evidence that it does. That means a clear photo/video provided in its original format for analysis or a body.

For the record, my belief, based on the absence of evidence of an historically easily located species for seven decades in a first world country heavily birded, is that the IBWO is extinct.

Like other members of the BF community, I will be very pleased to be wrong. Proving that to my satisfaction (as well as that of the authorities) will require incontrovertible video, photograph or a fresh IBWO body.

Nobody is suggesting it is up to you to provide it. But until someone does, my position remains the same: the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is a dead woodpecker. It has passed on, gone before: shuffled off this mortal coil.

John

 

[ZanderII]

I think it is just a stupid comparison. I haven't heard of any degreed and experienced biologists claiming to have seen sasquatch.

Have a read of this

Relevant extracts:

Cryptozoological creatures like Nessie and Bigfoot are both (supposedly) large animals living in large areas, and both have decades of “evidence” to suggest that we might film one someday—as we did the giant squid. But practicing biologists still consider these mythic animals’ existence to be highly unlikely. Why? In science, the kind of evidence matters; all unlikelihoods are not created equal.

It’s possible to move backwards on the continuum as well. The more personal data gets—the more the evidence is anecdotal and neither repeatable nor verifiable—the less likely a theory becomes. Anecdotal support like stories and sightings don’t determine impossibility, but frankly, a body is always better. That is something others can measure and touch; nobody can see exactly what you saw. The fallibility of anecdotal and eyewitness support is why it is very unlikely (if not impossible) that a large ape-human hybrid roams the world’s deep forests and that the Loch Ness is anything other than barren. If that is the true state of Nessie’s and Bigfoot’s biology, how can their existence be so commonsensical in our culture?

We have had quite a list of respected ornithologists and birders who believe they have seen IB. And regardless, it is a RED HERRING. It is an irrelevant diversion away from your unsupported claim that IB are extinct.

John Bindernagel was a biologist with a PhD and claimed to have seen bigfoot and wrote a book about the 'species'. Lots of other observers are also reputable... so are some people who report sightings of big cats in the UK....

This is a fun paper.