Well, except they can't actually produce a photo of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. They keep trying, though. This time they swear they have seen the bird, long thought extinct as many as 40 times. But oddly, nobody could get a picture of one of them.
But Auburn University ornithologists, who published their findings in Canada's Avian Conservation and Ecology journal online Tuesday, failed to capture a picture of the large woodpecker, which makes a distinct double rapping sound.
That lack of evidence means doubt about the bird's return remains.
The bird was thought to be extinct until 2004 when Cornell University researchers released recordings and an inconclusive grainy video after searching for it in the swamps of eastern Arkansas. The last confirmed ivory-billed sighting was in 1944.
Auburn ornithologist Geoffrey Hill headed the four-month Florida search that ended in April. He said his team would return to the Choctawhatchee River basin sometime around November with better equipment to try to get photographs.
"On 41 occasions different team members have seen the bird. We heard that double knock, it's a sound the ivory-billed makes that no other bird makes, but we didn't get a clear video of the bird," Hill said.
"I think people should be skeptical. I think they should demand clear photographic evidence. I might start to get skeptical myself thinking, 'I've seen this bird,' but how could I have seen a bird that it is impossible to photograph," he said.
It would be lovely if the bird is not extinct, don't get me wrong here. But this swearing up and down they have seen it but with no proof, no picture, no nests, not even a feather it begins to look an awful lot like wishful thinking.
The woods are about as full of those woodpeckers as they are of members of the vast Right-wing conspiracy.
Heh.