Greetings from beautiful, chilly Missoula. I haven’t been to Montana in 50 years and am enjoying the change of scenery. American Grail is premiering tonight. I’m included early in festival trailer, which was a very nice surprise. The first review has already been published, and it’s positive. It’s a little strange (but pleasing) to be […]
Exchanges with Chuck Hunter in a private Facebook group and in conversation inspired this addendum. If you haven’t read the original post, 2023 in Retrospect (Part 4): Acoustic Data in a Visual World, I encourage you to check it out first. Chuck’s comments led me to reconsider Tanner’s response to the Dennis recording, which resembles […]
Introduction While I didn’t fully apprehend it at the time, the events that took place over several days in mid-March 2017 were singular. Crucially, the set of recordings made by Matt Courtman (formerly affiliated with Project Coyote) and Phil Vanbergen is unique in the history of ivorybill searches. Project Principalis’s paper included a discussion of […]
During peak Covid, I started working on a fictionalized version of my life story for film or television. In October 2021, after Project Principalis got what I thought would be definitive trail cam imagery and I had my sure sighting, I put that project on hold and began working on developing an ivorybill documentary. Over […]
This installment will focus the media response to and online discourse about our paper (both the preprint and the peer-reviewed version) and how the 2005 Arkansas controversy and its aftermath helped shape our paper’s reception. It will also examine the way the discourse has privileged visual material, especially video, at the expense of the totality. […]
I had planned to complete the series before New Year’s, but a couple of mild illnesses intervened. I intended to follow the first post in this series with a discussion of media narratives, tentatively titled “Standing in the Shadows of Arkansas . . .”, but with recent end of year stories highlighting the 50th anniversary […]
It’s difficult to write about such an eventful year, so it seems best to tackle it in a series of posts. The publication of our paper was, of course, a major milestone, as was the Fish and Wildlife Service’s non-decision decision on delisting. The latter had deep personal significance, not least because my 2018 submission […]
Two years ago this morning, I saw an Ivory-billed Woodpecker. It’s my only certain sighting in over 15 years of searching. For new readers, I’ve had two others of which I am slightly less certain and another handful about which I’m a lot more skeptical. To honor the occasion, I’m going to repost my voice […]
Our peer-reviewed paper is available here. Update: The production error has apparently been corrected as of 1 pm on May 19. If you’ve read the paper already, be sure to clear your history to see the corrected version. First, a shoutout to my co-authors: Tommy Michot, Peggy Shrum, Patricia Johnson, Jay Tischendorf, Mike Weeks, John […]
I’m personally indebted to David Martin (AKA Fangsheath). Not only was Dave a mentor during my early years as a searcher, Project Principalis would not exist without him. He was familiar with our study site and directed Frank Wiley to it as a promising place to search. Frank had a sighting soon thereafter. That sighting […]
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