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Ivory-billed Woodpecker: Debunking the Critics (1 Viewer)
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RafaelMatias
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I'll just add that it seemed like those people could not tell a Black Vulture from a Turkey Vulture, so it'd be no surprise to anyone that Ivory-billed Woodpeckers are seen here and there.
Your purposely misleading I don't find it that funny. I correctly IDed those birds.
RafaelMatias
Unknown member
You, and probably many other people. But the fact is that those people looking for the woodpecker could not, and the show was "aired" like that, which was actually surprising to me. There's no way to know if M Collins himself was aware of this or not (unless you're MC) but it didn't look good to me at all.
I know you guys think it's crazy but it really is a hard bird to study. Also know it's easier to be a funny skeptic then finding out what was really out there. Sometimes I wish I never looked.
Seriously Mike, I hope you are right. But the evidence thus far presented is far from compelling. You need more data.
Good luck in your search.
Deb Burhinus
Used to be well known! 😎
Out of interest, apologies for being out of the loop here, but IBWO has not been on my radar for 6 or 7 years now - So, I am interested to know, has there been some recent developments (of any nature) that brings you to activate a ‘proof of existence’ argument (actually re-activate it) with members of BF now? Are you of the hope of convincing the few that are still listening that the ‘evidence’ collected is irrefutable? Surely, long ago that was proven to be a lost cause on BF?
What I have seen so far, are the same arguments on both sides, some intelligent and some playing to the gallery for kicks. But I’ve not seen anything new under the Sun here sadly, despite badly wanting to.
There have been developments and discoveries since the two papers came out, the initial Arkansas paper and the Auburn Windsor University paper on Florida.
There are also some bad developments such as diminished interest and the recent scheduling of meetings to declare the species officially extinct. This obviously had some political overtones so the veracity of future efforts to delist might be lessened.
I'm not comfortable in going into some of the good developments in a public forum. You see how demanding and cynical people are.
Some but not all of the good developments are only based on increased knowledge and realization of mistakes. For example almost all of Usfws/Cornell's formal searching with public funds was done incorrectly. The advanced and very structured survey methods were so intrusive that they scared Ivory bills away rather than attracting them or stimulating them to respond in some detectable manner. I and others have the opinion almost all their data on hundreds of thousands of acres produced false negatives. Regardless they did have some positive auditory detections.
In addition people like ******* and ******* on the ivory build woodpecker recovery plan committee purposely sabotaged the effectiveness of the surveys by insisting that unnecessary and quite tangential data sets be gathered by the field teams. This bird is hard enough to find without having to gather superfluous data sets. Any distraction just lessens the possibility of a detection.
There should have been a layered approach towards the surveys updated instantaneously according to exact field conditions. In other words after an ivory build was detected then and only then would you gather habitat data and all birds heard in the area.
Teams that developed their own survey methods had better detection rates than the official teams.
As far as discovering new things about the old literature certainly the restored film of the imperial woodpecker pretty much clinches that the US fish and wildlife, Cornell and many others were correct in concluding that at least one bird persisted in Arkansas
Regardless of the level of favorable developments they must be tempered with the fact that the few groups of scientists I know who were employing very good detection methods only found evidence of several birds. They only covered a fraction of the total acreage in the southeast but they surveyed some of the best acreage. So there's still some hope but you must realize the remaining unsurveyed acres are not very supportive of successful breeding.
On the management side someone has finally figured out why the ivory bill is not reproducing. Whether this is a good or bad development depends on so many variables, future actions or inactions and impediments that predicting the future is impossible.
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Your hope is very very touching. Of course getting out in the field yourself rather than volunteering me might be even more touching. Gofund me pages are always available for those with sincere aspirations, low funditis and several thousand posts on BF (the latter not necessarily you).
Of course before you get out there best to learn something about the subtle to significant differences in the subject species. Also jumping on the bandwagon will not produce compelling evidence. Out of the box thinking works rather than the usual hear it on the alert, put the pint down, get a little gen, and grab your bins, jump in the car, drive to the little patch and twitch it. Good luck I can't wait to see what happens. Zzzzzzzz
Of course before you get out there best to learn something about the subtle to significant differences in the subject species. Also jumping on the bandwagon will not produce compelling evidence. Out of the box thinking works rather than the usual hear it on the alert, put the pint down, get a little gen, and grab your bins, jump in the car, drive to the little patch and twitch it. Good luck I can't wait to see what happens. Zzzzzzzz
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I assume some here missed this vacillation by edumacated skeptics....many years ago:
Monday, August 01, 2005
-- Critics Retract! --
--------------------------------------------------Three prominent critics of the Arkansas IBWO evidence are now retracting the paper originally planned for internet publication at end of July. Further acoustic evidence (recordings of both the "kent" call and the distinctive 'double-rap') from the Cornell group of the bird's existence have convinced the skeptics not only of an Ivory-bill's presence, but of at least an active pair! ....duhhhhh!!
With this rather embarrassing episode behind us hopefully a thorough southern search can continue with the full effort and seriousness that will be needed, without distraction (...as SHOULD'VE been done in the 50's... or 60's... or 70's... or.....)
End post by Rob G.
Hi,
I notice you're evading the question. While that's close to admitting you're Mike: Seriously, what's keeping you from actually admitting it, or simply using your real name for the discussion?
Regarding the Luneau video, I'll concentrate on the flawed assumption that the wing beat frequency is a criterion to rule out other Woodpeckers.
While I already pointed out the problem with that claim in 2019, Mike failed to take address this in his latest article. Maybe you could try to fix that oversight now:
www.birdforum.net
www.birdforum.net
Regards,
Henning
I notice you're evading the question. While that's close to admitting you're Mike: Seriously, what's keeping you from actually admitting it, or simply using your real name for the discussion?
Regarding the Luneau video, I'll concentrate on the flawed assumption that the wing beat frequency is a criterion to rule out other Woodpeckers.
While I already pointed out the problem with that claim in 2019, Mike failed to take address this in his latest article. Maybe you could try to fix that oversight now:
new paper on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker
Not nearly as many as you are missing, though... such as even a shred of credible evidence. Credibility is in the eye of the beholder. Signs that my data have credibility include the published assessments of independent experts, comments made privately by other ornithologists and scientists who...
www.birdforum.net
new paper on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker
. . .Nobody has put the slightest dent in any of the analysis. Nothing of any value has come out of the discussions in this thread. I'm not going to waste any more of my time with it. Before you go, I’d be interested to hear your response to Hauksen’s statistical point (post #71).
www.birdforum.net
Regards,
Henning
The reward can't be collected for reasons already iterated.
Unfortunately that evidence proved to be unreliable. Ambiguous sound-recordings are not proof.
Presumably the mods know and I assumed that Truthseeker was banned from Birdforum for the personal attacks, I assume they are on top of people assuming new identities.
There are clues in usage of words "Anthropomorphic double knocks' was used by Truthseeker, this is an extremely rare combination of words online, it is used in this bizarre website advertising expeditions for IBWO-watchers and boasting of considerable success in finding them, and appears again in abbreviated format from a poster called FAV here who uses the same syntax as Truthseeker and Diane.
Anthropormorphic should be Anthropogenic in this case, whomever invented the term doesn't understand the meaning of the word.
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