The following was taken from the article.

The biggest and most exciting bird news is that two reports of ivory-billed woodpeckers have surfaced this week. The first report we received was from Louisiana not far from the area so extensively searched in January 2004. From what scanty information we received on the sighting, it seemed four researchers sighted a bird in early May 2005 and have been studying and researching the area since that time trying to document their sighting.

The second report was an announcement from a five-man team headed by Dr. Geoff Hill, ornithology professor at Auburn University in Florida. Two research assistants, Tyler Hicks and Brian Roleck, and Dr. Daniel J. Mennill, assistant professor at the University of Windsor in Ontario, and grad student Kyle Seiston also were on the team.

I’d like to hear about their findings.

I’ve heard similar stories and rumors for the last twenty years or so. Sightings by people who didn’t just fall off a turnip truck, sightings kept on the QT.

As the saying goes, “Where there’s smoke …”

The announcement of the announcement made here is worth not a small amount of salivating. Imagine a definitive presentation of proof the Ivory-billed is out there.

For me, proof, if not forthcoming, will not make or break the case for the IBW’s existence.

The evidence might do better.

Strange, that without concrete proof, we still hold theories in physics to be binding as if they were proof.

The evidence surpasses the proof when no proof can be obtained to counter the theory simply because the nature of the universe might hold near infinity explanations in diminishing probabilities.

It is ok by me, but probably not to many, to sell a high probability of a creature’s existence based on evidence rather than based on proof.

The evidence sells me. And the IBW evidence sells me too. No proof, but sometimes one does not need proof to make a positive determination.

Best regards,

DR

As I understand their position, the Auburn team is not claiming that the recordings constitute proof of existence.

Sighting reports, intriguing but ultimately inconclusive photos and video, otherwise unidentifiable sound recordings, and varioius forms of indirect physical evidence provide more than sufficient basis, in my opinion, to justify funding for searches of mature bottomland forest habitat, in Florida and elsewhere, for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

Of course, many of us might make the same arguments with regard to support for sasquatch research.

The search of cavities for feathers and such, as suggested by crgintx, seems so obvious that I have to believe the Auburn team thought of it too. Perhaps some results of this avenue of research will be part of the upcoming announcements at the AOU meetings. That would be exciting.

I am with you 100%, no joke. Far from it for me to understand the audio taken. I trust you and this study’s personnel to know how to read the sounds. I really think that it is simply a neat find. But how do explain to the crass know-it-alls who sound like me but unlike me, actually are that way?

An avid bird watcher I know well swears she has seen an ivory-billed on her getaway farm. I ain’t gonna call her a liar or blind or hallucinating.

My point was simply to understand the method of evaluating such evidence, specifically audio, and how such evidence can be accepted or refuted, and what a skeptic can do to it. Your explanation satisfies me, but will it satisfy others? It’s evidence, but can it prove existence?

Darn same ole question.

It’s probably compelling moreso than BF audio, because we’re simply talking a “bird” and not talking BF. But, why hold a different standard for BF than an ivory-billed woodpecker?

I don’t have any real answer. I was just trying my best to ask a question in a thought-provoking way.

Thank you for your generous response, and I truly hope you or someone will get a snapshot of this bird very soon.

It will only help to keep minds open to the somewhat improbable in nature.

Best Regards,

DR

I intended no implications of endorsement or insinuations of acceptance of the validity of the Auburn recordings; I merely thought readers would be interested in hearing the sounds mentioned in the Hill et al. 2006 paper, since they are not directly available as links.

However, I will say that I find the putative kent call recordings intriguing. The fact that the frequencies and such of the calls heard and documented in Florida compared favorably with historic Ivory-billed Woodpecker recordings is less compelling to me personally than the impact or effect of the recorded sounds to my ears. I’ve conducted hundreds of bird censuses and collected many birds, and generally spent lots of time watching birds. I was fortunate to be able to spend a great deal of time over the course of several years with some of the most skilled birders in the country. We identified more birds by sound than by sight. The possible kent calls do not remind me of species with which I am familiar.

I don’t think your analogy with questionable photographs, if you are referencing blobsquatches or pictures of supposed cryptids, is germane. The Auburn team presented their rationale for excluding possible “kent” sources, such as Blue Jays and nuthatches. The correlation of the sounds in time and space with allied forms of evidence and sightings by expert birders (who do NOT casually claim to see any rare species) leads me to accept the probability that the species still exists.

The second time I saw it I was actually walking in the marsh. I was looking for my beagle and my yelling flushed the bird out. I was very close when I jumped it and the beating of its wings startled me. For a second I thought it was a wood cock, and I put a bead on it. Thank God I realized what it was before I shot. Louisiana boys don’t miss often.