Emupilot suggested: "It might be a good idea to set up a "control" audio station in the woods near Auburn where the scientists looked at the size of Pileated Woodpecker holes and then process the data in the same way as their experimental stations. Blue Jays and nuthatches may be present there, whereas not at the study site, but that analysis might put to bed the apparently very small possibility that something besides IBWO was making all those kent calls and double-knocks."
Excellent suggestion, indeed, but to control for investigator bias, those screening the calls should not be informed of the location where recordings were made (i.e., they should be screening "blindly" recordings from both the Florida and Auburn sites). It would be interesting to learn how many sounds identified as "kents" or "double-knocks" would be interpreted from the Auburn location. Unfortunately, the Auburn location is likely much closer to human disturbance, so perhaps another good (or better) control would be a remote location further north where PIWO still occurs but where IBWO would clearly be absent. This would be a problem, however, if other species calling were to tip off the screener where the recordings were from. It would be ideal to train screeners who knew essentially nothing about birds and, therefore, could be as objective as possible in identifying candidate calls.
