I don’t think anyone is claiming this is an intentional hoax. Several of the authors are prominent members of an organization whose goal is to prove the continued existence of IBWO, which might suggest compromised objectivity.
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Sorry, didn’t mean to offend. I heard a few folks on twitter talking about it as if it were one. So, I was curious, and I thought it better to ask here than there.
No offense at all. “Hoax” suggests to me intentionally fabricating evidence, and I would want solid documentation before alleging something like that. At least in my opinion, that pre-print falls more into the “wishful thinking” category.
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Moved side discussion of taxonomic ranks and hybridization (which I helped start off…sorry!) to it’s own topic to keep this one more focused on original topic.
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but has anyone checked Mars for Ivory Billed Woodpeckers?
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Humans are pattern-seeking animals … we see faces and animals in rocks and sometimes we see animals that shouldn’t exist in other animals that are similar, based on our hopes and expectations (or sometimes after consulting pictures on the internet, which tends to bias what we recall).
I saw during a quick look at some comments on blogs discussing the IBWO that there are quite a few people out there who say they’ve seen the bird, that it occurs in their backyard, that it’s neither rare or extinct. No photos of course.
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You’ve cracked the case! We were looking on Earth, when all along we should have been searching for IBWOs on Mars!
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The real reason Elon Musk wants to go to Mars.
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On the Internet, April 1 is the one day of the year when people don’t believe everything they read.
These birds molt, right? How often have I known that a Flicker had been in the area, not because I saw the Flicker, but because I found a molted feather? Same for Steller’s Jay. A bird as large as an Ivory-bill would leave behind very large molted wing and tail feathers, which could be DNA-tested.
One thing that was lost in the discussion of bark and wood chips is the excavated nesting cavities. Regardless of feeding strategy, a large woodpecker would need to excavate a large nesting cavity, and obviously, a nesting cavity will hold still to be photographed, even if it is not currently in use.
I say this to suggest that maybe a different approach is needed. Instead of grainy photos of what may or may not be birds and ambiguous audio recordings, maybe what is needed is to search for the signs of the organism. After all, if wolf researchers can learn a lot about wolves’ habits just by following pugmarks without necessarily ever seeing the wolves, surely Ivory-bill searchers can do something similar – if the birds are there to leave signs, that is.
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Exactly why I brought up the wood chips! The closest woodpecker to it, in my opinion, is Pileated. Their wood chipping is done for more than prospecting for insects. There’s drumming,(which does help chip the scrag trees) and, like you said, the major chipping from nest holes. Pileateds make 3! His, hers, and the nest. So I remain unconvinced until evidence of organism is collected and tested.
I could call that an IBWO but it’s a little out of range.
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I have been aware of this debate for some time but until recently have largely avoided it because I considered myself a hopeful skeptic. With all the considered extinct species popping back up lately I had begun to be more hopeful. However recently (late May) an event occurred which pulled me deeply in to the yup they do exist camp. I was traveling between Pangburn Arkansas and Heber springs and a large woodpecker flew across the road in plain view in front of me. My first thought was ok a pileated. I had seen one under much the same conditions earlier in the day However as it came more fully into my field of vision it became obvious this bird was different, not only was it larger but it had a significantly greater amount of white. The bird continued across the road and landed on the side of an old dead oak at which point the very prominent white “saddle bags” as i call them were almost all that was visible. Nor was this a red head due to the size alone. Road side conditions for safety reasons did not allow for a photo stop. However I plan to revisit the area in the near future.
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What if the Ivory-bill makes a comeback like the bald eagle has? – maybe they were decimated by something released into the environment in those times, which improved regulation has cleaned up.
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We can hope, but the evidence that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker was done in by habitat loss plus shooting is strong. Plus, the last generally accepted U.S. sighting is from 1944. Pollution was a problem then, but not as bad as it would be later. DDT, for example, was developed in the 1940’s and the Ivory-bill population had crashed before that.
(Extinction generally follows a pattern of population crash followed by a slow tapering off as normal bad things happen to a population too small to survive them all.)
[Edited to replace “Pileated” with “Ivory-billed” which is what I meant. Sigh. Also to clarify that 1944 was the last generally accepted U.S. observation; it persisted in Cuba.]
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Do you mean the ivory-billed? Pileated woodpeckers are still around, I’ve got an observation for one in my area and have seen additional ones who didn’t want to sit still for pictures.
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The last sighting in the US was in 1944, the last sighting of the species was actually in Cuba in 1987.
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True.