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 […]
I’m reposting an entry from February 2015 with some new commentary as prologue. I recently received a Google alert about a new paper on statistical approaches to extinction relying on sight records. According to the paper, which has not yet been peer reviewed: We have shown that the rate of sightings is the strongest indicator […]
I returned to the search area last week and spent as much time as I could in the field. The trip was generally uneventful, and conditions – strong winds, rain, and high water – limited my field time. Woodpeckers are getting quieter generally; full leaf out, heat (temperatures in the high 80s on the 26th, […]
This post is inspired in large part by an exchange of emails with Chris Sharpe, an ornithologist who is working on an IBWO literature review. Our correspondence revolved around the IUCN’s species account, which describes the ivorybill as “possibly extinct” and cites recent statistical analyses that suggest extinction is likely, as well as one that […]
I have been re-reading George Lamb’s 1957 report on the Cuban Ivory-billed Woodpecker. A number of items struck me as potentially significant for North American searchers, some for how they diverge from Tanner and others for their level of detail. Since this report is likely unfamiliar to many, I thought I’d do a quick post […]
In a 1936 letter to James Tanner before Tanner began his survey of possible ivorybill habitat in the southeast, Herbert Stoddard wrote, “The area where they (Ivory-billed Woodpeckers) may occur at present is simply tremendous, not restricted as many believe.” Stoddard continued, “. . . if I had the rest of my life for the […]
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