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Ivory-billed Woodpecker (formerly updates) (8 Viewers)
- Thread starter KC Foggin
- Start date
rob stoff
Well-known member
given the claims that there are masses of suitable habitat and that these supposedly extant IBWO haven't been hunted or collected for many decades why wouldn't they now be common if they existed?
Rob
Xenospiza
Distracted
A relict population used to occur in South Korea (Gwangneung Forest), but it has disappeared there. I could imagine it still occurs somewhere in the North...
Fred Virrazzi
Well-known member
Cuban IBWO seperate species Republic
>>>Our data suggest that, like C. imperialis, both
C. p. principalis and C. p. bairdii should also be
considered separate species.<<<<<
RBCs, AOU, ABA, etc are lagging indicators hence Bairdii as suggested is a pending seperate species (Fleicher, et al. 2006)
The Korean White-bellied Woodpecker had 20 to 50 birds a few years back in N. Korea. It is a larger wookpecker that its southern subspecies per body mass rule.
The founding fathers, incredible men, (yes many Englishmen), did not want regional candidates, with concentrated landslides in subsections of the large country they envsioned, to steal the election when not getting a plurality in a majority of states. Hence the electoral college and our Republic--- not technically a democracy---but fairer for the reason stated. An incredible check and balance system.
You have improvements with the recommendations of the great brain trust assembled here 230 years ago? And they all believed the IBWO existed......and were right again.
Rob[/QUOTE]
>>>Our data suggest that, like C. imperialis, both
C. p. principalis and C. p. bairdii should also be
considered separate species.<<<<<
RBCs, AOU, ABA, etc are lagging indicators hence Bairdii as suggested is a pending seperate species (Fleicher, et al. 2006)
The Korean White-bellied Woodpecker had 20 to 50 birds a few years back in N. Korea. It is a larger wookpecker that its southern subspecies per body mass rule.
The founding fathers, incredible men, (yes many Englishmen), did not want regional candidates, with concentrated landslides in subsections of the large country they envsioned, to steal the election when not getting a plurality in a majority of states. Hence the electoral college and our Republic--- not technically a democracy---but fairer for the reason stated. An incredible check and balance system.
You have improvements with the recommendations of the great brain trust assembled here 230 years ago? And they all believed the IBWO existed......and were right again.
Rob[/QUOTE]
lewis20126
Well-known member
I don't think anyone is disputing the fact that IBWO was present 230 years ago. It just ain't there NOW.
Piltdownwoman
Well-known member
I just read an Onion News story about this very exciting research, and immediately thought of this forum.
Researchers Discover Details Smaller Than Minutiae
PASADENA, CA—A team of Caltech scientists announced Monday that they have discovered a type of conversational detail smaller than minutiae, the class of particulars long thought to be the smallest possible building blocks of mundanity. "These tiny sub-minutiae, or 'boredons,' are so insignificant that they contain almost no information, useless or otherwise," said head researcher Dr. Nathan Yang, adding that the conversationally inconsequential details naturally occur in elevators and other enclosed spaces containing high concentrations of vaguely familiar acquaintances. "At least six must be combined to make up a detail that even remotely approaches the declarative weight of a triviality, and more than 200 are required to compose a viable trifle." Yang said that the basic unit of tedium remained undiscovered for so long because boredons are instantly forgotten as soon as they are heard.
http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/researchers_discover
Researchers Discover Details Smaller Than Minutiae
PASADENA, CA—A team of Caltech scientists announced Monday that they have discovered a type of conversational detail smaller than minutiae, the class of particulars long thought to be the smallest possible building blocks of mundanity. "These tiny sub-minutiae, or 'boredons,' are so insignificant that they contain almost no information, useless or otherwise," said head researcher Dr. Nathan Yang, adding that the conversationally inconsequential details naturally occur in elevators and other enclosed spaces containing high concentrations of vaguely familiar acquaintances. "At least six must be combined to make up a detail that even remotely approaches the declarative weight of a triviality, and more than 200 are required to compose a viable trifle." Yang said that the basic unit of tedium remained undiscovered for so long because boredons are instantly forgotten as soon as they are heard.
http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/researchers_discover
Thanks, that just gave me a good laugh!
rob stoff
Well-known member
Ironically enough such utterances were long ago discovered and described as metalinguistic units (= metalanguage - pointless verbiage which exists solely to confirm that lines of communication are open) by Russian linguistic theorists such as Roman Jakobson!
Rob
Last edited:
And as we're talking about Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, I presume we're referring to nested metalanguage.
Update
An update from Geoff Hill can be found here:
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/scie.../faculty/webpages/hill/ivorybill/Updates.html
An update from Geoff Hill can be found here:
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/scie.../faculty/webpages/hill/ivorybill/Updates.html
Terry O'Nolley
Cow-headed Jaybird
I love how he begs birders not to intrude on their undisclosed study area then goes on to post a list of places to search for Ivory-billed Woodpeckers!
Hmmm, my thinking is that those places listed must not be the places where they think they IBWOs actually are
Geoff Hill said:
Microtus
Maryland USA (he/him)
From the "Update Overdue" section of Jeff Hill's page:
"With this new sensor, we should have almost no false activations. Every picture should be a woodpecker banging on the tree. "
This assumes the woodpeckers don't land on the other side of the trunk from where the camera is pointing?
"With this new sensor, we should have almost no false activations. Every picture should be a woodpecker banging on the tree. "
This assumes the woodpeckers don't land on the other side of the trunk from where the camera is pointing?
Black Wheatear
Bowed but not broken, yet!
Not only extremely funny, but very much applicable to this thread. Did Yang actually examine this thread as part of his research?
:-O
rob stoff
Well-known member
contains a link to a description and field sketch (from memory, 2 days after the event) of the best encounter of the season - a 4 second view of a bird flying towards then over John Agnew in a kayak. Agnew felt the need to consult the Sibley iillustrations afterwards, would have though the field characters would be etched into the mind of anyone, skeptic or believer, who went anywhere near the search areas! sketch shows a bird with a pale bill (but text states bill colour not seen) underwing is all dark apart from white secondaries, i.e. completely wrong for IBWO. so, the same old nonsense from very inexperienced birders, can't rule out a duck (again) once the power of suggestion is factored in and sketch is proven to have bits added.
Rob
Fred Virrazzi
Well-known member
Choctaw evidence strogly suggests IBWO
There are things that show they are not experienced in field note taking and proper documentation of rarities but this is only evidence of that and only weak circumstantial evidence that the bird was or wasn't an IBWO.
Likewise some show inexperience here in how the ventral side of a backlit or a partially backlit IBWO wing seen from below sometimes appears. There are only handful of pixs out there, certainaly not hard to know them well, but still some are not aware of them...or pretend.
See famous Singer pix of backlit bird overhead which is quite like the artists rendering of the Choctaw bird as far as darkness in leading part of wing due to relative opaqueness there.
In addition how can it be a duck when it was perched on the side of a tree; even if a wood duck they do not look anything like the drawing. Besides there are few ducks in the Choctaw besides Aix sponsa and Mallards...these do not have white like this in the ventral wing.
There is honesty in the artists drawing, notes and story. In addition a separate viewer also believed they saw the same IBWO seconds after from a different immediate area.
Regardless the drawing is off here and there (wings short) and the poor performance after the sighting makes the whole thing weaker. The lack of basic training by those in charge on the need for immediate note taking/drawing is bewildering. Perhaps this is a product of the high demand for only pixs and traditional value of field notes is no longer high. If we collectively do not honor field notes what value are they (I still see value)? Still this sighting is not the standard to judge presence and absence, either way, of IBWO in the Choctaw area.
Hicks, Rolex, Hill and ~18 others at least have seen them, two or three sightings very robust, with good notes, 2 of 3 of these first individuals are experienced and cannot be making repeated mistakes unless there is an aberrant PIWO which would be easily documented due to small range. In addition one must explain how diurnal only, kents and DKs are heterogenously distributed and are mathematically correlated to GPSed sighting locations of putative IBWOs in double blind data gathering methods. There are also at least three videos of suggestive birds, some concurrently iDed in the field as IBWO. The evidence is unequivocally suggestive (oxymoron) of the presence of IBWO.
I also surveyed the river via a ~ 65 mile canoe trip and heard an unmistakable double knock followed by kents. This is a magnificent riparian corridor of incredible natural resource value. The Florida state agencies have done a good job in preserving parts of the watershed which is an important N- S migratory highway for trans-gulf migrants and fall migrants also.
Anyone who has birded for any length of time here (US) has seen birds that used the Choctaw.
tks Fv
There are things that show they are not experienced in field note taking and proper documentation of rarities but this is only evidence of that and only weak circumstantial evidence that the bird was or wasn't an IBWO.
Likewise some show inexperience here in how the ventral side of a backlit or a partially backlit IBWO wing seen from below sometimes appears. There are only handful of pixs out there, certainaly not hard to know them well, but still some are not aware of them...or pretend.
See famous Singer pix of backlit bird overhead which is quite like the artists rendering of the Choctaw bird as far as darkness in leading part of wing due to relative opaqueness there.
In addition how can it be a duck when it was perched on the side of a tree; even if a wood duck they do not look anything like the drawing. Besides there are few ducks in the Choctaw besides Aix sponsa and Mallards...these do not have white like this in the ventral wing.
There is honesty in the artists drawing, notes and story. In addition a separate viewer also believed they saw the same IBWO seconds after from a different immediate area.
Regardless the drawing is off here and there (wings short) and the poor performance after the sighting makes the whole thing weaker. The lack of basic training by those in charge on the need for immediate note taking/drawing is bewildering. Perhaps this is a product of the high demand for only pixs and traditional value of field notes is no longer high. If we collectively do not honor field notes what value are they (I still see value)? Still this sighting is not the standard to judge presence and absence, either way, of IBWO in the Choctaw area.
Hicks, Rolex, Hill and ~18 others at least have seen them, two or three sightings very robust, with good notes, 2 of 3 of these first individuals are experienced and cannot be making repeated mistakes unless there is an aberrant PIWO which would be easily documented due to small range. In addition one must explain how diurnal only, kents and DKs are heterogenously distributed and are mathematically correlated to GPSed sighting locations of putative IBWOs in double blind data gathering methods. There are also at least three videos of suggestive birds, some concurrently iDed in the field as IBWO. The evidence is unequivocally suggestive (oxymoron) of the presence of IBWO.
I also surveyed the river via a ~ 65 mile canoe trip and heard an unmistakable double knock followed by kents. This is a magnificent riparian corridor of incredible natural resource value. The Florida state agencies have done a good job in preserving parts of the watershed which is an important N- S migratory highway for trans-gulf migrants and fall migrants also.
Anyone who has birded for any length of time here (US) has seen birds that used the Choctaw.
tks Fv
pcoin
Well-known member
double counter bluff/tree
I think it goes even deeper. The whole "Ivory-bill Rediscovery" is most likely a cover for the real story--the rediscovery of the Carolina Parakeet in those same impenetrable southern swamps. Trust me, I have my sources.
Well, there's the problem with this strategy. Dr. Hill has already explained how his Ivory-bills are always on the other side of the tree when a human observer is present (here):
It's obviously a double counter bluff. They know people want to know the location of the IBWO, and will discover it, so they publish it on the Internet, and then say they are keeping it secret. Devilishly clever. To misquote (slightly) Kevin Kline's character Otto in A Fish Called Wanda:I love how he begs birders not to intrude on their undisclosed study area then goes on to post a list of places to search for Ivory-billed Woodpeckers!
Hmmm, my thinking is that those places listed must not be the places where they think they IBWOs actually are
Look, you obviously don't know anything about birding--it's an X-K-Red-27 technique.
(For those of you who have not seen the movie, Otto is trying to explain why he claims to be spreading news that the CIA is debriefing a KGB defector in a suburban English neighborhood.)I think it goes even deeper. The whole "Ivory-bill Rediscovery" is most likely a cover for the real story--the rediscovery of the Carolina Parakeet in those same impenetrable southern swamps. Trust me, I have my sources.
Well, there's the problem with this strategy. Dr. Hill has already explained how his Ivory-bills are always on the other side of the tree when a human observer is present (here):
When Ivory-billed Woodpeckers detect a person, they move away from him or her. First they appear to shift to the side of the tree away from the approaching person. Then they fly directly away, keeping the tree between themselves and the human. This behind-the-tree behavior means that even on the rare occasion when an observer gets close to an ivorybill, he or she typically won't see the bird when it flies off
I'm sure the same phenomenon will occur with a camera. We know from numerous non-observations in Arkansas and Florida that 21st century Ivorybills are extremely wary of cameras, automated or otherwise. Non-observation of the IBWO with the new cameras will simply confirm more aspects of the ultra-wariness hypothesis. Science marches on.I havent met a woodpecker that didnt use the tree as a barrier. I just dont understand how these people are out there and "oh my camera wasnt ready". They should camera strapped on and multiple backup batteries and cameras.
Docmartin
Thought Police
Surprised no one has mentioned this paper (below) - Louis Bevier put me onto it. Pasted below. Choice quote in ligh of Dr Hill's comment cited above would be, i guess,
'Although it is always possible to invent rationales to explain the lack of conclusive evidence, available evidence indicates that the ivory-billed woodpecker probably became extinct in the southeastern United States by the middle of the twentieth century.'
More in my Secret Freezer.
BioScience Volume 58, 549-555 (2008)
Using Anecdotal Occurrence Data for Rare or Elusive Species: The Illusion of Reality and a Call for Evidentiary Standards Kevin S. McKelvey, Keith B. Aubry, and Michael K. Schwartz
Abstract.Anecdotal occurrence data (unverifiable observations of organisms or their sign) and inconclusive physical data are often used to assess the current and historical ranges of rare or elusive species. However, the use of such data for species conservation can lead to large errors of omission and commission, which can influence the allocation of limited funds and the efficacy of subsequent conservation efforts. We present three examples of biological misunderstandings, all of them with significant conservation implications, that resulted from the acceptance of anecdotal observations as empirical evidence. To avoid such errors, we recommend that a priori standards constrain the acceptance of occurrence data, with more stringent standards applied to the data for rare species. Because data standards are likely to be taxon specific, professional societies should develop specific evidentiary standards to use when assessing occurrence data for their taxa of interest.
'Although it is always possible to invent rationales to explain the lack of conclusive evidence, available evidence indicates that the ivory-billed woodpecker probably became extinct in the southeastern United States by the middle of the twentieth century.'
More in my Secret Freezer.
BioScience Volume 58, 549-555 (2008)
Using Anecdotal Occurrence Data for Rare or Elusive Species: The Illusion of Reality and a Call for Evidentiary Standards Kevin S. McKelvey, Keith B. Aubry, and Michael K. Schwartz
Abstract.Anecdotal occurrence data (unverifiable observations of organisms or their sign) and inconclusive physical data are often used to assess the current and historical ranges of rare or elusive species. However, the use of such data for species conservation can lead to large errors of omission and commission, which can influence the allocation of limited funds and the efficacy of subsequent conservation efforts. We present three examples of biological misunderstandings, all of them with significant conservation implications, that resulted from the acceptance of anecdotal observations as empirical evidence. To avoid such errors, we recommend that a priori standards constrain the acceptance of occurrence data, with more stringent standards applied to the data for rare species. Because data standards are likely to be taxon specific, professional societies should develop specific evidentiary standards to use when assessing occurrence data for their taxa of interest.
David Callahan
Well-known member
rob stoff
Well-known member
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