New Debate Over Luneau Footage
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 16th, 2007
You knew it was going to happen. The debate about the ivory-billed woodpecker’s re-discovery has boiled over to the frame by frame analyses, con and pro, of the 2004 Arkansas video on a level comparable to that we’ve seen with the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot footage.
In the journal BMC Biology on March 13, 2007, the latest is a discussion of the frame by frame analysis of what has become known as the Luneau video by a Scottish scientist Martin Collinson. Collinson just is not buying the fact that the ivory-billed woodpecker has been found. He thinks the video is of another similar, but smaller woodpecker. Meanwhile, others are calling Collinson’s study faulted because the ivory-billed woodpecker’s wing-beats are faster.
The last confirmed sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker in North America was in 1944. Researchers believed the species was extinct until 2004, when a kayaker is said to have spotted one in eastern Arkansas. Since then, there have been several sightings, and a videotape shot by David Luneau, an electronics professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, was released.AP/Science, March 15, 2007
Now the fallout begins. It is the Great Luneau Video Debate.
The bird in the Arkansas video is best regarded as not fully identified, and is probably a pileated woodpecker. - Martin Collinson, geneticist, University of Aberdeen, Scotland
The Luneau video is inconsistent in every respect with pileated woodpecker. We have yet to see even a single video of pileated woodpecker that matches the (Arkansas) video. Show us one and I’ll change my mind. Nobody can do it.John Fitzpatrick, director, Cornell University’s Laboratory of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York
The journal, with analysis, has this entry available for review. It is worth a read over, and it is free.
The 32-page paper is located here and is entitled:
Video analysis of the escape flight of Pileated Woodpecker Dryocopus pileatus: Does the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Campephilus principalis persist in continental North America?
The author is J Martin Collinson
BMC Biology 2007, 5:8
Oh boy, here we go. Just when it seems that most scientists are accepting the ivory-bills reappearance, bam!
I am crazy about birds and would love to see this particular woodpecker out and about.
It’s the Ivory bill, an example of Ivory bill envy.
I’ve long been a big fan of the Ivory Bill. Since I was a kid I have suspected it wasn’t really gone. I guess this is a case of scientific inertia. Once something has been declared extinct, it seems to be really hard to admit the conclusion was mistaken.
I wonder when the guy in the woodpecker suit will step forward to say it was all staged? At least it can be said that Ray Wallace didn’t have his hand (foot?) on this case!
I WANT to believe. Let’s hope that some really conclusive film or photos turn up soon.
The Ivory Bill video is obviously a hoax. Anyone can see that its just a man in a suit.
I confess!
I wore the woodpecker costume in the film and for the photos.
This is sad. I’m hoping there are some still out there. But the way this is going, eventually we will have something like the Monty Python Parrot sketch.
No, it is a fourth-dimensional entity that flits back and forth at will just to tantalize us.
This is starting to resemble the Parrot sketch from Monty Python.
I find it incredibly amusing that a kayaker seeing it was enough to put this species back on the map. I do not know the whole sequence of events in any great detail, but I find it to be remarkable how little was required for this species to be declared as not extinct yet. Somehow I don’t think a kayaker seeing, say, a thylacine, would have the same impact.
I can’t wait until they start arguing about whether the 8.6 wingbeats per second (or whatever) are precise enough and will they have to slice and dice the video even further, arguing over whether its actually 8.65 or 8.59 wbps. Hasn’t anyone ever heard of individual variation within species? If some future scientist came upon their remains, would Shaq O’Neal and (midget actor) Billy Barty be placed into different species?
Although I am definitely non-kill on the sasquatch issue, this is a pretty good run-up for any sas evidence which doesn’t have a body (alive or dead) attached. Photos and videos are just not enough for people who won’t let go their own preconceptions.
Well, if it turns out to be a false alarm, there is a silver lining. It’s heightened our attention to the issues of conservation and demonstrated that it’s one in which the public has great interest. It’s shown small communities that may have never given much thought to eco-tourism, that birders, natualists, photographers, and all sorts of regular folk with a passion for wild places bring good opportunities to their towns, and not just shut down economic developement. Even people who might never have given the environment much thought might now be finding themselves taking extra interest in the backyard birdfeeder.
And, it is an important lesson on how the scientific community (ornithologists, ecologists, biophysicists and even acoustic electronic engineers) use scientific techniques and logic to support their points, sometimes vehemently, and sometimes unkind things are said, but ultimately the reality is supported and we’re all a bit better off.
I dont get it thats a pretty good image, why the uncertainty?
all i know is that after that video there was people all over that swamp looking for that bird, sure did mess up my deer hunt that year.