DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY — You expect government to be naive sometimes, but some prominent research universities — that’s you, Cornell — treat animals like birdbrains. This week, they formally gave up on finding the ivory-billed woodpecker.<\/p>\n
This was reported in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette<\/em>, which for a half-decade has kept a special projects team just for hard-hitting reporting on scientists confirming the bird once considered extinct. (Proving that reports of newspapers going extinct need to be verified by science as well.) The article in Friday<\/a> — the three paragraphs you can read without a subscription are sufficient because, well, you have me — would go on to note how this began in 2004 with a valid sighting.<\/p>\n The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is ending its funding of the project, $14 million so far. The administration of George W. Bush authorized the expenditure so it was a conservative use of tax money.<\/p>\n What Fish, Wildlife and Cornell forget is the intelligence of animals. This woodpecker species may not be rare, they’re just cleverer than we assume. Consider how often your pets outsmart you. We think of creatures as guided by instincts of food, mating and migration. While those are necessary — they’ve certainly stood me in good stead — ivory-bills successfully have avoided poachers, habitat developers and other idiots since the 19th century. After the turn of this century, maybe they got a little careless.<\/p>\n Scientists saw an ivory-bill some six times in 2004-05, but not since. Before disappearing, ivory-bill woodpeckers apparently wanted the last “Ha-ha-ha-HAA-ha<\/a>.” A series of police reports in 2006 documents their path of mischief: Brick’s<\/strong> Birdberg Blotter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n I found these 14 news items from newspapers in towns so small they don’t have Wal-Marts, much less cell towers and the Internet. The 14 blotter briefs make slightly more sense when read from earliest up, Feb. 12 up to Feb. 25.<\/p>\n In 1982, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder recorded “Ebony and Ivory<\/a>.” On muggy nights in the swamps of southern Arkansas, you can hear among the “kent-like” calls of either ivory-bills or bluejays<\/a> a twee version of the hit pop song: “Japery and Ivory live together with some tension \/ Like keys dropped in bogs, here and there, don’t give it a mention.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY — You expect government to be naive sometimes, but some prominent research universities — that’s you, Cornell — treat animals like birdbrains. This week, they formally gave up on finding the ivory-billed woodpecker. This was reported in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which for a half-decade has kept a special projects team just for hard-hitting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdberg-blotter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/02\/birdberg-blotter-pileated-police-log\/","url_meta":{"origin":1862,"position":0},"title":"Birdberg Blotter: Pileated Police Log","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 12, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"NEWS ITEM (AP, more or less) -- Recordings of the ivory-billed woodpecker's distinctive calls have convinced doubting researchers that the large bird once thought extinct is still living in an Arkansas swamp, the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge. \"We sent them some sounds this summer,\" said John W. Fitzpatrick, director\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Birdberg Blotter"","block_context":{"text":"Birdberg Blotter","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/briefs\/birdberg-blotter\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7104,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2021\/09\/reopening-birdberg-blotter\/","url_meta":{"origin":1862,"position":1},"title":"Reopening Birdberg Blotter","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 29, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a9 2006 Ben S. Pollock If Twitter had been up in February 2006, these listings from a mirthological police blotter log would have been tweets. But that social medium came about weeks later. The ivory-billed woodpecker, unofficially considered extinct, had been spotted the previous two years in rural Arkansas. Ivory-billed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Birdberg Blotter"","block_context":{"text":"Birdberg Blotter","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/briefs\/birdberg-blotter\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Detail of Audubon engraving of ivory-billed woodpecker","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Campephilus_principalis-Ivory-billed-Woodpecker-Audubon-16x9-1.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Campephilus_principalis-Ivory-billed-Woodpecker-Audubon-16x9-1.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Campephilus_principalis-Ivory-billed-Woodpecker-Audubon-16x9-1.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Campephilus_principalis-Ivory-billed-Woodpecker-Audubon-16x9-1.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Campephilus_principalis-Ivory-billed-Woodpecker-Audubon-16x9-1.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":122,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/08\/introduction-or-transition\/","url_meta":{"origin":1862,"position":2},"title":"Introduction or transition?","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"August 17, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005. News item: Not now. \"News item\" is a decades-old method to prepare the reader for an essay or column, especially a humorous one, whose subject, or just an allusion used in it, may be borderline obscure. If it truly is obscure,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technical Difficulties"","block_context":{"text":"Technical Difficulties","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/briefs\/technical-difficulties\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":119,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/08\/mock-of-the-mockingbird\/","url_meta":{"origin":1862,"position":3},"title":"Mock of the Mockingbird","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"August 25, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock \"[Russ A. Charif, a research biologist at Cornell Lab of Ornithology,] said after his talk that the 'kent' sounds alone were not conclusive because scientists could not completely rule out a blue jay mimicking the sound of an ivory bill. ...\" -- The New York\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":79,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/06\/bargaining-universal\/","url_meta":{"origin":1862,"position":4},"title":"Bargaining universal","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"June 10, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock Thursday, June 10, 2004. The small business community continues to make itself extinct. It's so easy to hit Wal-Mart as it's such a big target (pun intended) but it's what we truly want. Bargaining is a basic human need as food and sex, if you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":640,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/08\/to-serve-dragon\/","url_meta":{"origin":1862,"position":5},"title":"To Serve Dragon","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"August 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"(A reference to the Twilight Zone classic episode, \"To Serve Man.\") At Shady Hills, we worry a bit about the cats' diet since that canned-food scare last year. Most current pet food books recommend raw foods. After all, who cooked for Rosemary and Tiki in Fayetteville fields and alleys? Besides\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1862"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1886,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1862\/revisions\/1886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}