Ivory-billed Woodpecker (formerly updates) (10 Viewers)

[Louis Bevier]

Stepping into this parallel universe for a moment, something appropriate to an alternate reality such as this will air on television tonight. Bobby Harrison's blurry, fly-by split-second video clip captured September 2004 may be shown during an episode of "This American Life" (snickering across the pond, please!). The episode is mentioned in a recent newspaper article too.

The title of this episode is "Going Down in History," where the word "down" appears to mean something more literal as suggested by the advertisement: "Stories of people trying to make--and remake--history, while others go down in history in ways they never intended...[including] a man with a 30-year obsession with one particular bird unveils the grainy, Big Foot-style video evidence that he saw it." When I visited Cornell in June 2005, that video clip was dismissed as inconclusive by John Fitzpatrick, with others seeing features that suggested to them it was a pileated (see comments here, and "two cents" in comments here). This video clip was also linked to an article by Mel White in a December 2006 National Geographic. (Goatnose's blurry blob, er, image, is unidentifiable, I think we all agree; nevertheless, it appears to be a still from this video that shows what looks like a pileated.)

In other news, several reviews of Geoff Hill's book "Ivorybill Hunters" beyond those published in Birding by Ken Able and Mark Robbins appeared recently (some links here require subscription). One is in The Condor (vol. 110, no. 1, pp.190-191). This review is by Robert P. Russell, someone who I think has reported an Ivory-bill himself in Florida (an odd choice if one is soliciting an impartial review). This follows a review by William E. Davis, Jr. in Wilson Journal of Ornithology (vol. 120, no. 1, pp. 232-233). I'm not sure anyone has mentioned David Sibley's review of "Ivorybill Hunters" in the December 2007 issue of Quarterly Review of Biology, nor one by Theunis Piersma in Ardea. The latter, altough by a well-known shorebird biologists, seems out of touch with the reality of the evidence. The Russell review says that "Ivorybill Hunters" is an "important contribution to the natural history of the Florida panhandle." Considering Geoff Hill himself rejects that assessment of what he has written (see page 127) and that nothing described beyond the stories is based on verifiable evidence (sounds, holes, and peelings by unseen organisms or other sources), I think Russell has overstated the book's importance in that regard. Our very own Doc Martin reviewed "Ivorybill Hunters in British Birds last year.

 

[lewis20126]

Gosh, I agree with you Lewis, much easier, I just need a more comfortable chair to sit in while following this site. I will probably go out and pick up a more pleasing chair tomorrow, darn going out to search.

Just picking the thorns out of my scalp from a four hour session under a large stand of Prunus spinosa with a sprosser (don't worry goat, it aint an extinct pecker & no swamps involved- you wouldn't be interested). Now where did I leave my comfy chair...

a

 

[Ilya Maclean]

Just picking the thorns out of my scalp from a four hour session under a large stand of Prunus spinosa with a sprosser (don't worry goat, it aint an extinct pecker & no swamps involved- you wouldn't be interested). Now where did I leave my comfy chair...

a

Any joy? Been thinking one's been on the cards all weekend with the north-easterlies. Can sympathise having had a similar experience a few years back. Of course - they aren't half as tricky to ID and elusive as those pesky IBWOs. Or should that be illusive.....

Enjoy the comfy chair

 

[Terry O'Nolley]

the people on the ground searching don't believe they've been able to do a thorough enough job to know they're gone.

And it will stay that way forever because you can't prove a negative.

 

[Terry O'Nolley]

http://www.fishcrow.com/choc_wp.avi
Mr Collins has now posted video of a bird with a totally clear black trailing edge and said he wouldn't like to place a bet on its identity.

I attended one of his lectures at the Smithsonian and saw his Powerpoint presentation and got to watch the videos on a large screen.

I listened to his explanation of wingbeats per second and a lot of other stuff but ended up leaving at the end and not staying around for the Q&A because there didn't appear to be anything.

 

[Louis Bevier]

Re: Michael Collins

...I listened to his explanation of wingbeats per second and a lot of other stuff but ended up leaving at the end and not staying around for the Q&A because there didn't appear to be anything.

Now see, Terry, you've left yourself open to criticism that you missed the important points by not staying for the Q&A! I was "Collinsed" on 5-14-08. The journal entry for that day shows how, in a manner similar to creationists recently cropping up in the school district adjacent to mine in Maine, Michael Collins hopes to persuade people of his beliefs with spurious arguments and denial of contradictory evidence. His entry for that day does not tell readers that I merely presented existing empirical evidence demonstrating that woodpeckers with higher mass tend to have a slower wing beat rate (read here to see the various factors for yourself). Mr. Collins also neglected to note that I have measured wing beat rates of Pileateds matching the supposed "ivory-bills." These data reject his, Harrison's, and other's claims that wing beat rate can be used to eliminate Pileated. Additionally, Collins and others overlook that the longer wing-arm of the Ivory-bill, like a longer pendulum, would contribute to a slower wing beat rate (a correlation observed across bird taxa). The argument that wing beat rate and wing beat style (wing tip elevation and depression) seen in the videos so far presented are diagnostic or suggestive is just plain wrong. As Terry notes, there doesn't appear to be anything there.

 

[dave_in_michigan]

What I'm stuck on is the fact that the people on the ground searching don't believe they've been able to do a thorough enough job to know they're gone.

And it will stay that way forever because you can't prove a negative.

Ooh, gee. Oops, you got me.

Of course you could have read all the way down to this:

What's missing for me is someone involved in the actual dedicated search efforts reporting that they are convinced that they've searched well enough to know with pretty good certainty that they're not there.

But there's no fun in quoting that one, is there?

Oh well.

 

[Terry O'Nolley]

Ooh, gee. Oops, you got me.
Of course you could have read all the way down to this:

What's missing for me is someone involved in the actual dedicated search efforts reporting that they are convinced that they've searched well enough to know with pretty good certainty that they're not there.

But there's no fun in quoting that one, is there?
Oh well.

OK, I would reply to it like this "What's missing for me is someone involved in the actual dedicated search with the behavioral traits of enough intelligence to be considered an authority while retaining the bizarre belief that he, alone amongst all men, can prove a negative".

As for the "fun" part, no, it's not fun shooting fish in barrels.

 

[Fred Virrazzi]

There are problems with several assertions/sections of Louis’s works which have as their central focus the Luneau video. Also he touches on such tangential subthemes as “why don’t we care about Imperial Woodpecker?” or this “is a serious budgetary situation” (neither of these things being at all pertinent to actual field identification of the subject species but I guess fun to discuss even if unscientific on an alleged science page).

On his website the focus is expanded into some sweeping inductive assertions.
The flap rate graph was accompanied with carefully parsed language that correctly pointed out the limited and scant data he utilized to make a graphical attempt at clarifying why an IBWO could have a lower Hz flap rate than the PIWO.

Fortunately many of us know the answer already via the overwhelming field reports brought to us by the fathers and sons of US ornithology and then followed by hundreds of additional ACTUAL OBSERVERS of the Ivory-billed. The unequivocal answer by the likes of Audubon, Bent, Dennis, etc., throughout the alphabet, all the way to duck hunters in Louisiana is that the Ivory-billed had a noticeably faster, duck-like, wing beat frequency noticeably faster than a Pileated. In addition we have the Singer T evidence that again show a higher wing beat frequency that may be at the high end of what a Pileated can accomplish in SHORT distances.

We still have not seen any live PIWO or video of any Pileated, a common bird, that comes close to the Hz AND the distance of the flight of the Luneau bird. And yes, there are at a minimum, partial wing cycles that can be used to deduce wing Hz from “late” in the Luneau video that show it maintained a high, non-Pileated, frequency during the entire distance. Partial wing cycles are empirical data; it should not be thrown out for the sake of internal and parochial agreement with flawed work.

Perhaps tens of thousands of wing cycles of the Ivory-billed have been witnessed. The overwhelming consensus stated/states that the IBWO flaps much faster than is predicted in LB’s graph. Louis, I would like to know how and why you decided not to give even a phrase in reference to the thousands of wing cycles observed by hundreds of historical and competent observers of actual Ivory-billeds? Did they agree with your graph? Or was it just because these are subjective they must be ignored?

The idea that a simple graph with only two variables could correctly correlate something so complex as a flight dynamic’s derivative such as flap frequency is fraught with problems. In this case we have quite different intergeneric species with many pertinent co-variables such as wing shape/area, aspect ratio, weight, wing tuck, range of wing extension, behavioral differences, etc.

The importance of this field problem requires methods that will result in empirical predicted Hz rates with a low +, - margin of error. That some think that this graph is useful to the discussion of a problem that needs refined analytical methods says a lot about how careful some are with purported data. Even if that graph was right it would surely be by luck because at best its incomplete.

We know the graph is wrong so no further serious work taking away from the time and money available to produce real graphs of variables that we know exist and are correct needs to be done. : -) .

LB said on Bird Forum >>>Collins and others overlook that the longer wing-arm of the Ivory-bill, like a longer pendulum, would contribute to a slower wing beat rate (a correlation observed across bird taxa).>>>>

The Ivory-billeds actual wing (pit to tip versus wing span) is the same length or very similar length to an PIWO wing. The wing span includes the relatively wider body of an IBWO which when subtracted out adjusts the IBWO/PIWO wing length to a close range of values.


And now we have the remarkable, via angle of view, 3/29/08 Collin’s video. I am thankful to have obtained the entire tape and have been discussing the tape with various flight and video experts. A tree duck should be looked at as all species should be but have researched and eliminated that as a possibility. Analysis of the hundreds of frames continues but the present consensus is that this bird is not a duck, is a large woodpecker, and is not a Pileated. If this occurred in the ‘80s in Cuba this would count as an Ivory-billed by the public, in the literature and by most of the “experts” as it did then…. without a video.

This bird has a trailing white half (entire white half) of the dorsal side of the wing, which starts at the proximal end of the wing and the midline of the wing and extends along this midline into the outer primaries. It has a woodpecker flight characteristics (~90 degree bend at the elbow during each cycle, unlike a duck) and is moving at 33 mphs.

Back to the graph as I want to waste resources ….…I just plugged in the heavy Imperial…the darn bird doesn’t flap at all……….was it a glider?….. could it be the missing bird-dinosaur link? No wonder it went extinct.

Good birdin’

Fred

 

[streatham]

Fred - you're too late mate - that fat lady has sung - it's just you, an irishman who has never seen a woodpecker and an entertaining professional wind-up merchant in michigan left - everyone else has figured it out.

atb - Luke

 

[salar53]

Fred - you're too late mate - that fat lady has sung - it's just you, an irishman who has never seen a woodpecker and an entertaining professional wind-up merchant in michigan left - everyone else has figured it out.

atb - Luke

You may not believe that Mike Collins' video of 29th March, 2008 shows an Ivory-billed Woodpecker. There is no doubt, however, that his heart is in the right place. His latest journal entry makes sad reading:

I have just heard that 7000 acres near a few of the ivorybill sightings have been purchased by a logging company.

Soon there'll be no bark to peel, no beetle grubs to eat.

 

[lewis20126]

Any joy? Been thinking one's been on the cards all weekend with the north-easterlies. Can sympathise having had a similar experience a few years back. Of course - they aren't half as tricky to ID and elusive as those pesky IBWOs. Or should that be illusive.....

Enjoy the comfy chair

Top views in with da bird - don't tell the twitchers though. I remembered the tales of a sprosser a Walsey Hills back in the day (mid 1980s?) which used to do a circuit and afforded close range views but only if you lay down under the blackthorn. And it worked! No ghillie suit required.

IBWO? - still extinct. Can't understand why the thread is extant.... Bonkers.

Comfy chair? - filled with duck down (possibly hooded merganser?). Nice.

cheers
alan

 

[EMalatesta]

Fred - you're too late mate - that fat lady has sung -

Absolutely. If the Cornell people actually found an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in 2004 as they claimed, they'd be studying them now instead of trying to relocate one. Since the year of the claimed rediscovery, they've had four years of extensive searches and they've come up with nothing. You think something is going to turn up in the fifth, sixth, or seventh search year? No way. It's over. Case closed.

As for the *heart* of Mike Collins, who cares. His brain is in the wrong place. Anyone who gets a very poor view of a bird and tries to turn it into something very rare or accidental is a bad birder. The images on his website are very blurry. I can't even make out a bird in most of them. And he tries to argue that they're images of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers? He's out of his mind.

 

[PandionMlt]

Absolutely. If the Cornell people actually found an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in 2004 as they claimed, they'd be studying them now instead of trying to relocate one. Since the year of the claimed rediscovery, they've had four years of extensive searches and they've come up with nothing. You think something is going to turn up in the fifth, sixth, or seventh search year? No way. It's over. Case closed.

As for the *heart* of Mike Collins, who cares. His brain is in the wrong place. Anyone who gets a very poor view of a bird and tries to turn it into something very rare or accidental is a bad birder. The images on his website are very blurry. I can't even make out a bird in most of them. And he tries to argue that they're images of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers? He's out of his mind.

Agreed... with all those eyes in the field its impossible that there is no shard of evidence. all that money and effort should be directed towards a declining species THAT WE ARE SURE EXISTS not a chimera THAT WAS LAST SEEN IN 1940!

 

[humminbird]

not a chimera THAT WAS LAST SEEN IN 1940!

Was it? There is a continuing and consistent line of reports since the 40's that have been completely ignored or scoffed at.

 

[Imaginos]

Was it? There is a continuing and consistent line of reports since the 40's that have been completely ignored or scoffed at.

As there have been of bigfoot.

And around we go again, in ever decreasing circles.

 

[streatham]

Was it? There is a continuing and consistent line of reports since the 40's that have been completely ignored or scoffed at.

There have been consistent reports of Eskimo Curlew as well (including one from my state not so far back) and we know for sure that they at least survived into the 60's. Perhaps Cornell/TNC/USFWS can give me 27 million - I promise to spend the rest of my life keeping an eye out for it. I have a plan that involves eating in diners (which I will be sure to include descriptions of in my blog/report), remote cameras and lots of helicopter rides.

 

[pcoin]

the myth of non-follow-up

Was it? There is a continuing and consistent line of reports since the 40's that have been completely ignored or scoffed at.

I really think this is a myth--that reports were not followed up on for all this time. (Some were scoffed at--yes--that is because details and documentation were largely lacking.) As a young birder in Oklahoma in the 1960's, I remember the rumors about Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in the Big Thicket. I remember that birders went to look for the birds--I believe I read an article in Audubon magazine about these follow-up searches in 1970 or so. Jerome Jackson, for instance, followed up on reports for years.
From Jackson, In Search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (2006), p. 190, with a little bit of bold here and there for emphasis, plus a link or two, added by me:

The most recent reports from Texas were of observations made in the the 1960's in the Big Thicket area between the Trinity and Neches rivers by Eastman, Dennis, and others. In 1962, Eastman suggested that were two pairs and one extra female remaining in a near virgin forest area in the Big Thicket. Dennis reported hearing and recording an ivory-bill there on February 25, 1968. The recording was later analyzed at the Bioacoustic Laboratory at the Florida Museum of Natural History by John William Hardy, who concluded that it was either a blue jay or an ivory-billed woodpecker. Then he threw "scientific conservatism to the wind" and stated "my ear leans toward the ivory-bill."

In response to Dennis's report from the area, Tanner and Sykes spent a week in January 1968 with Dennis in the Big Thicket, searching areas in the Neches and Angelina River bottoms and along a section of the Trinity River. They searched on foot, by ear, boat, and plane and Sykes and Tanner concluded that then were no ivory-bills there. George Miksch Sutton also investigated these ivory-bill reports and indicated that he felt Dennis was "overly optimistic". Tanner also noted that Ernest McDaniel, a native of the Big Thicket and former president of the Texas Ornithological Society, had searched for ivory-bill in east Texas for ten years with no success....
Hal Owens, a Texas lawyer and amateur birder, searched repeatedly for ivory-bills in the Big Thicket and had what he referred to as an "extremely likely sighting" in 1969. He had used distribution of posters offering a cash reward for verified ivory-bill sightings..., aerial surveys, and amplified recordings with no positive results.
​

Jackson goes on to discuss other possible sightings for eastern Texas and various efforts to document any populations. I don't see the account above showing too much scoffing and ignoring--sounds like follow-up to me!

Note, too, the parallels with the current controversy:

• confusion of calls with Blue Jays
• dispute over identity of double-raps (discussed by Jackson later--not quoted above)
• reports by locals, unconfirmed by visiting ornithologists (also described on p. 191, which I did not quote)
• extensive follow-up by competent local birders (not rare in the South, despite what some may think), finding nothing
• most of all--many tantalizing poor sightings or dubious recordings of vocalizations, never followed by a discovery of a breeding population, which should be comparatively easy to find during the nesting season and immediately preceding it

Deja vu all over again!

 

[PandionMlt]

Was it? There is a continuing and consistent line of reports since the 40's that have been completely ignored or scoffed at.

A continuing and consistent line of reports means nothing... nothing at all. get me some evidence and i ll believe the long and consistent line of reports. i find it hard to believe that in all these years not even bark scaling was found... come on, get real.

 

[curunir]

A continuing and consistent line of reports means nothing... nothing at all. get me some evidence and i ll believe the long and consistent line of reports. i find it hard to believe that in all these years not even bark scaling was found... come on, get real.

Everything means something, only some things mean almost nothing. I still believe the giant pecker lives and is probing around in a hole someplace in the deep south.