To most of the public, cryptozoology seems to consist of two things.

1) Showing blurry pictures and trying to coax monsters out of them, sort of like we make clouds into dragons.

2) Seeing something – or saying you did – and at the same moment you blare the news, hide everything to secure the rights.

Says here: no one who has anything even really interesting, to say nothing of conclusive, will hide it. There will be no need to do so. Your name will be attached to what you submit, by virtue of your submitting it. If you want to get confirmation from reputable scientists first, why sure. But that does not sound like the case here.

I agree with Alton. I personally think the sasquatch is more likely to be with us than the ivorybill. But that is not why I agree with Alton. Why I agree with Alton is the strong smell of an animal known to be eaten by the (confirmed) US occurrence of the Amazon Kingfisher.

I don’t live very far from the Sabine River basin. Maybe I should go take a hike one day, camera in hand of course.

We’re going to have to wait and see whether Mr. Rainsong does submit his photos to the independent experts he mentions, then wait for the verdict.

I hope it’s all real, but we’ve had a lot of false alarms on this bird. My personal opinion is that there are still a few birds scattered around the Southeast (some of the Florida sightings are interesting, and I’m not convinced the Arkansas case has been disproved), but every year may be the species’ last. I pray I am too pessimistic.

I think this is a hoax, in part, because this whole deal is being portrayed and executed in such an odd way. For one, I don’t believe that stating the location, even generally, of Rainsong’s supposed observations is something anyone who truly had the best interests of the species at heart would do. In addition, presenting a “press release” from such an unconventional source and in such a bass-ackward manner, i.e., without corroborative statements of support from people like Kenn Kaufman, LSU’s Van Remsen, or the Lab of Ornithology’s Ken Rosenberg, is crazy. So far as I know, nobody has actually seen these photos, and Rainsong doesn’t appear to be a person who has previously been involved with birding or any kind of applicable fieldwork. Are we supposed to accept the validity of Rainsong’s bona fides and expertise on the basis of the word of another person unknown to the scientific community? The fact that he claims to have succeeded within days of the beginning of his venture last December just seems too far fetched from reality for me to swallow. Finally, Rainsong appears to be motivated by money, but that doesn’t make sense either because, as pointed out by others, he would then need to produce the real deal, presuming his photos are convincing.

I hope I’m wrong, but nothing about this makes sense to me. I think it’s a hoax.