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So: Many experts now agree ... some birds use fire as a weapon.

He [Penn State geographer Dr. Mark Bonta] plans to travel to Australia soon to assist Gosford [an Australian lawyer who represents the interests of aboriginal people in Australia’s Northern Territory] with the field study research, and hopes that they’ll gather photographic evidence of the behavior during this year’s Northern Australian fire season, which (due to El Nino) is predicted to be long and severe.
Can Birds Actually Start Forest Fires? (Audubon, Feb 22, 2016)


Notice that another attempt was made in 2018, and this time they didn't depend on the random fires and their random locations. This time it was controlled and organized:

Those Gosford and his colleagues solicited photos and videos of the behavior, they haven't yet received any usable footage. They hope to document the behavior in the field later this year, by closely studying a series of control burns administered by local firefighters.
"The more word gets out on this, the better," says Bonta. "It's only a matter of time."
Why These Birds Carry Flames in Their Beaks (NatGeo, Jan 8, 2018)


That it's only a matter of time is what believers always say to keep their hopes and dreams alive. (If you don't believe me, try googling "it's only a matter of time" + Bigfoot. In fact, do so even if you do believe me!)
The information about controlled fires administered by firefighters ruins the idea of out-of-control fires where videographers can't be allowed to get in the way of hardworking professionals who are busy trying to prevent the fire from spreading.

I think it's safe to assume that no raptors were caught on video spreading fire in 2018 in spite of a whole series of controlled burns.


So what happened after Bonta, Gosford et al. had been "closely studying a series of control burns administered by local firefighters"?, you may well ask:
Not much, apparently, and probably nothing at all. The fires burned and the birds got their meal of roasted vertebrates and invertebrates.

Six months after the project was announced, Gosford pretended that evidence for the fire-spreading birds was a done deal and that all that was missing was proof that the birds do it deliberately:

The burning question in the research is whether the raptors “intend” to spread the fire, or whether the act is an accident, say, by the raptor having mistaken the stick for food.
Mr Gosford suggests the “intent of raptors is to spread fire to unburned locations... to flush out prey via flames or smoke”.
(...)
“As usual (with media) there’s a brief hot flare,” Mr Gosford said.
“Then you’ve got to get on with the rest of your life.”
(...)
But many questions remain to be answered, and it is to those his research now turns.
For example, how does one “prove” a bird’s intent for the act of spreading the fire?Bird researcher Bob Gosford explains theory on fire hawks (The Weekly Times, July 18, 2018)


Well, before we get on to that interesting question, it would be nice to see actual evidence, that birds spread fire in the first place. It's a little like the problem with homeopathy: Why worry about how it is supposed to work when it has never been shown to actually work? (In spite of thousands of eyewitness reports claiming that it works!)

But let's congratulate Bonta, Gosford & Co:
That's the spirit!
'We didn't get the the footage to prove that raptors spread fire, so now we pretend that it's not a problem that we didn't, and that the only problem is that we didn't prove intentionality! And so we can get on with our lives, and the rest is up to you, dear reader: Please help us prove we're right!'
If you have a report, footage or pictures of birds spreading fire Bob Gosford and his colleagues would love to hear from you. He can be contacted by email at birdknowledge@gmail.com.


Yes, I don't doubt that Bob and his colleagues would love for you to do that! :dl:
 
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:monkey1: 10:30 -->
This Bigfoot-like cryptid is said to haunt the swamps of Florida. But has the story been around as long as people think?
(...)
And we also have an example of that other old stand-by of cryptozoologists: claims that the local native population has long had legends of it. (...)
I personally find it disrespectful and more than a little distasteful when cryptozoologists habitually exploit a First Nation's culture in an effort to lend nativist credibility to their pseudoscientific claim.
Hunting the Florida Skunk Ape (Skeptoid, May 16, 2023)
 
Another faked video - almost as bad as the one in post 536, 0:32-37:
In the comments, nobody seems to have noticed the fake.
 
Another faked video - almost as bad as the one in post 536, 0:32-37:
In the comments, nobody seems to have noticed the fake.

Though there are new theories from the comments section:

Rhinos have a reaction mechanism to extinguish fire, a rhinoceros can appear out of nowhere at night in Africa if they see a campfire from afar with the sole intention of putting it out, without a doubt they are the firefighters of nature.
 
And there it is, the natural and eco-friendly solution to Australian bushfires, but it may result in a lot of firefighters being made redundant.
The poster doesn't say how exactly rhinos manage to put out fires. I thought they might stamp on them:


This clip from the Copenhagen Zoo gave me another idea:


This particular specimen is a male. I wonder if females are as good at it. Maybe it's a man's job. Protecting the herd and all that.

The white rhinos in Copenhagen are an endangered species, but they had a lot of calves in recent years, most of them males, unfortunately, so I think they'll have to get rid of some of them anyway when they reach maturity. It wouldn't hurt for Australia to ask ...

However, before new wildlife is introduced to Australia, many things need to be considered. In this case, it might piss off some Australian kites. Literally.
 
When I read the most recent article on Science-Based Medicine today, I was reminded of this:
Your continuous dissing of rangers and others reporting behavior is disrespectful and only reflects on you in a very negative manner.


This was the paragraph:
In the Autism Omnibus hearings, an expert examined videotapes of the child of one of the claimants (Michelle Cedillo) at ages 6-8 months submitted by the parents to prove that their child had been fine before vaccines. Sadly, the expert saw clear signs of autism in these videotapes, as well as signs of the parents adjusting their behavior to her. It is unsurprising that Kirsch was unaware of this background, as he is a newbie to the vaccine-autism conspiracy theory, but he really did embarrass himself acting as though he had discovered something new. No doubt he will react as other antivaxxers have reacted to such observations and accuse me of attacking parents as liars, when nothing could be further from the truth. Confirmation bias is a powerful force in human memory. We are all prone to it and all experience it. It takes active effort to counter it, which most of us do not do.
Steve Kirsch: How anti-COVID-19 vaccine often becomes radicalized and just antivaccine (Science-Based Medicine, June 5, 2023)


It not only stresses how unreliable eyewitness are and that pointing it out is by no means disrespectful. It also stresses the value of video evidence, which the parents in this case deserved credit for having provided. In this case, video footage was important because the parents didn't have the expertise to see the signs of autism that would only be obvious to an expert. In the case of the story of the fire-spreading birds, it would be important because many of the things that allegedly prevent the birds from being filmed while picking up burning sticks would also impact observations: the firefighters have better things to do, i.e. fight fires, and there's smoke, there's heat, there are flames. All in all not the best conditions for videotaping, but also not the best conditions for observing and interpreting details of what birds allegedly carry off in their beaks or talons.

As in the case of UFO videos, Bigfoot videos, or the 'Havana syndrome' tapes, experts, actual experts, can (and should) help eyewitnesses understand what they think they saw or heard.
 
So what happened after Bonta, Gosford et al. had been "closely studying a series of control burns administered by local firefighters"?, you may well ask:
Not much, apparently, and probably nothing at all. The fires burned and the birds got their meal of roasted vertebrates and invertebrates.

Six months after the project was announced, Gosford pretended that evidence for the fire-spreading birds was a done deal and that all that was missing was proof that the birds do it deliberately:

It always puts my hackles up when scientists or science reporters try to ascribe intent to animal behavior. Sure, it's easy to see intent when a crow makes a tool to solve a puzzle and get a reward. But it's just not necessary, from a scientific point of view, for the researcher to try to get inside the animal's head and invent a just so story about what goes on there.

It's sufficient to observe that the behavior does in fact occur. In this case, that the bird does in fact carry fire to an unburned location, that the fire they're carrying does in fact catch there, and that they do in fact profit from the new blaze.

Which brings me to another thought:

These researchers are looking in the wrong place. It doesn't really matter where the fire comes from. And as I pointed out upthread, it's unlikely anyone working an active fire front will be able to observe both ends of the process. They might see a bird on the front with a burning stick, but they almost certainly won't see where that bird goes or what ultimately happens to the stick. But they don't need to see that end of it. They need to see the other end of it.

Researchers should be looking for the other end of it. They should be looking for high fire risk patches of savannah, relatively near to an active fire, where fire suddenly breaks out.

Tangentially: I suppose firefighting agencies have some pretty good ideas about how wildfire spreads. They know it follows fuel and gets pushed by the wind. They know it can leap across roads and firebreaks, if the conditions are right. They know embers can be scattered by the wind, and that a fire they have under control here may spark a fresh blaze over there without any connecting fuel.

If fires are suddenly breaking out, in patterns not explained by the wind theory of fire spread, you'd think firefighting agencies would be looking for explanations, to fill the gap in their understanding of how fire spreads. I'm not saying these agencies would have found this answer, but I'd expect them to be at least asking the questions.

Do the birds always follow the wind on their pyromaniac excursions? That would certainly make it easier for the researchers to decide where to look for new fires.

Do the birds just not do it often enough for the phenomenon to register as an anomaly? That might make it very hard for the researchers to find and document actual examples.

Anyway, it wouldn't surprise me at all if (some) birds were doing what is claimed. I'm just waiting for recorded observations of the payoff: The bird arriving with an ember, starting a wildfire, and hunting therefrom.
 


Yet another one of those 'smart bird videos' that have as little to do with the alleged fire-spreading birds as a photo of cockatoos lifting the lids of garbage bins.

Even Bonta, Gosford & Co. understand this, which is why they aren't asking people to send them videos of smart birds. Instead, they want you to send them "a report, footage or pictures of birds spreading fire." (One would think that they have more than enough reports already.)

You see, in spite of ideal circumstances, a whole "series of control burns administered by local firefighters", they didn't manage to get that footage themselves, so now they're asking amateurs to help them out.

"It's only a matter of time."
“Then you’ve got to get on with the rest of your life.”
 
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The lack of video becomes less and less excusable every day.

The fact that the current level of confidence in the claim is supported by a review of the anecdotal data, rather than a serious attempt to actually gather video data that would prove the hypothesis, is already pretty inexcusable.

I understand that video evidence is hard to gather from an active fire front. But science isn't supposed to be about half-assing things because doing them properly is too difficult.

These guys need to get a grant, buy a drone, and start actually looking for birds starting fires.

Crowdfund perhaps


Macdoc's antisocial blind link really shouldn't be the last word in this discussion.

1. WTF has a blind link got to do with anything?

2. My comment had nothing to do with his post (as you should have gathered from the fact that I didn't quote it)
 
What, in your opinion, is the strongest anecdotal evidence so far reported? Who was the witness? Where and when did they witness the event? Did they witness a kite carrying an ember away from an active fire front and infer that it was going to start a hunting-fire somewhere else? Or did they witness the the actual setting of the hunting-fire itself?


https://bioone.org/journals/journal...ern-Australia/10.2993/0278-0771-37.4.700.full


Nathan Ferguson, officer in charge of Tennant Creek's fire station in the Barkly Tablelands, has managed fire across most of the NT since 1998 and has observed fire-spreading about a dozen times since 2001. Though he initially discounted secondhand reports, after long experience, he has learned to incorporate the possibility of avian fire-spreading as a variable in bushfire management and, where he does not directly observe it, he infers its occurrence because he can find no other explanation (e.g., wind) for fires that have been completely controlled but later re-ignite. His belief concurs both with Tiwi firefighters on Melville Island, NT, where firefighter Jason Lewis worked and with firefighters in Katherine, NT, as reported by Angelo.

While Ferguson's most recent fire-spreading observation in March 2017 involved unsuccessful attempts to transport burning sticks, previous observations that stand out most to him, from September 2016 and around 2000-2001, were of a few kites, within gatherings of hundreds during very hot fires, successfully seizing burning sticks in their beaks, sometimes switching them to their talons, transporting them over 50 meters, dropping them, and, thus, igniting unburned grass. Like several other non-Aboriginal observers, and in concordance with Aboriginal IEK, Ferguson is adamant that fire-spreading behavior, whether successful or not in starting new fires, is intentional.

This is not just an anecdote (though angrysoba and dann will, of course, summarily dismiss it out of hand and call Mr Ferguson a liar or say he was mistaken), it is a definitive and documented description of what he saw. If you think he is mistaken, I'd love to hear your ideas on what he might have seen that he could have mistaken for "seizing burning sticks in their beaks, sometimes switching them to their talons, transporting them over 50 meters, dropping them, and, thus, igniting unburned grass".

I regard this sort of observation as like seeing a bolide in the sky. It happens very quickly - a matter of a few seconds - and you saw it, but people like angrysoba and dann will tell you that it didn't happen, because you didn't have enough time to get your cellphone out of your pocket, press the wake button, swipe the screen and put in your pin number, tap the camera icon, swipe across to the video function and start filming.

I have seen literally dozens of bolides in my lifetime, never yet managed to get one on video... no video so it didn't happen, right? Must be lying about them I guess :rolleyes:
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https://bioone.org/journals/journal...ern-Australia/10.2993/0278-0771-37.4.700.full


Nathan Ferguson, officer in charge of Tennant Creek's fire station in the Barkly Tablelands, has managed fire across most of the NT since 1998 and has observed fire-spreading about a dozen times since 2001. Though he initially discounted secondhand reports, after long experience, he has learned to incorporate the possibility of avian fire-spreading as a variable in bushfire management and, where he does not directly observe it, he infers its occurrence because he can find no other explanation (e.g., wind) for fires that have been completely controlled but later re-ignite. His belief concurs both with Tiwi firefighters on Melville Island, NT, where firefighter Jason Lewis worked and with firefighters in Katherine, NT, as reported by Angelo.

While Ferguson's most recent fire-spreading observation in March 2017 involved unsuccessful attempts to transport burning sticks, previous observations that stand out most to him, from September 2016 and around 2000-2001, were of a few kites, within gatherings of hundreds during very hot fires, successfully seizing burning sticks in their beaks, sometimes switching them to their talons, transporting them over 50 meters, dropping them, and, thus, igniting unburned grass. Like several other non-Aboriginal observers, and in concordance with Aboriginal IEK, Ferguson is adamant that fire-spreading behavior, whether successful or not in starting new fires, is intentional.

This is not just an anecdote (though angrysoba and dann will, of course, summarily dismiss it out of hand and call Mr Ferguson a liar or say he was mistaken), it is a definitive and documented description of what he saw. If you think he is mistaken, I'd love to hear your ideas on what he might have seen that he could have mistaken for "seizing burning sticks in their beaks, sometimes switching them to their talons, transporting them over 50 meters, dropping them, and, thus, igniting unburned grass".

I regard this sort of observation as like seeing a bolide in the sky. It happens very quickly - a matter of a few seconds - and you saw it, but people like angrysoba and dann will tell you that it didn't happen, because you didn't have enough time to get your cellphone out of your pocket, press the wake button, swipe the screen and put in your pin number, tap the camera icon, swipe across to the video function and start filming.

I have seen literally dozens of bolides in my lifetime, never yet managed to get one on video... no video so it didn't happen, right? Must be lying about them I guess :rolleyes:
.
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I’ve never called anyone a liar over this. Why be so passive aggressive?

But also look at your exaggerated claims about how long it takes to use a smartphone. Most smartphones have the camera app on the front screen and don’t require a lengthy process to open it.

I take it this firefighter was not alone while observing these events in 2016. The description suggests a fairly lengthy process.

How many firefighters were in attendance?
What smartphones did any one of them have?
Did they know how to use them?
What steps are they taking to record future incidences of fire-starting by birds on camera?
 
More than 50 recent posts have been consigned to AAAH and this thread has now been modboxed three times.

Despite that, the behaviour of the participants has not noticeably improved, so this is your last warning. Any more incivilities and personalisation, and this thread will be either moderated or closed (with instructions not to restart the conversation).

Discuss the subject of the thread title, and do it while being civil and polite.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Agatha
 
I’ve never called anyone a liar over this. Why be so passive aggressive?

You have dismissed what they said, so you are either calling them liars or claiming they are mistaken.

Yes or no: Are you claiming they are mistaken in what they observed?

I don't care which - they both have the same result in this context, and that is you are summarily dismissing their eye-witness statements.

But also look at your exaggerated claims about how long it takes to use a smartphone. Most smartphones have the camera app on the front screen and don’t require a lengthy process to open it.

Rubbish. I tested this myself this morning using my Samsung A54. When it is in my pocket in sleep mode (where it is most of the time when I am not actually using it) I have to

Remove from pocket
Press the wake button on the right hand side
Swipe the lock screen
Enter my six digit security code
Tap the Camera icon (on the home screen)
Swipe across to "video"

This takes 9 seconds - and this is not even taking to account reaction time, fumble fingers and pointing the camera at the subject!

I take it this firefighter was not alone while observing these events in 2016. The description suggests a fairly lengthy process.

Because a firefighter in full kit fighting a fire always has spare time to stop what he's doing, get his gloves off and find his phone to take some video :rolleyes:

If you have an issue with what he said, take it up with him. I did put a link to his LinkedIn profile in the earlier post to you can contact his and ask him personally

I, for one, believe his account - you don't want to believe what he said, that's fine. I don't care.
 
Maybe the best way to get footage is to have a hat-mounted camera like a GoPro. Turn it on when the birds are coming in to the fire and just hope for the event. The camera is aimed wherever you look.

This is better than a pocket phone camera.
 
You have dismissed what they said, so you are either calling them liars or claiming they are mistaken. Yes or no: Are you claiming they are mistaken in what they observed?

I don't care which - they both have the same result in this context, and that is you are summarily dismissing their eye-witness statements.

That is all you.

I think they might be mistaken.

I have not accused them of lying. You may make no moral distinction between a lie and a mistake or an accusation of lying or the ascription of a mistake, but I do make that moral distinction, so do me the courtesy of accurately recording what I said rather than what is convenient for your moral grandstanding.



Rubbish. I tested this myself this morning using my Samsung A54. When it is in my pocket in sleep mode (where it is most of the time when I am not actually using it) I have to

Remove from pocket
Press the wake button on the right hand side
Swipe the lock screen
Enter my six digit security code
Tap the Camera icon (on the home screen)
Swipe across to "video"

This takes 9 seconds - and this is not even taking to account reaction time, fumble fingers and pointing the camera at the subject!

How do we know the fireighters in question used a Samsung A54? In fact, what do you know about the anecdote that you claim is the best evidence for birds that light their own fires? It seems detailed enough to suggest that this took much longer than nine seconds, but not detailed enough to know who was there, or what kind of equipment they had.

Perhaps instead of using a Samsung A54, they could use a Go-Pro as William Parcher suggests, or a drone as I and others have suggested, or some body-cam that I imagine would have uses other than recording birds lighting fires.

There would surely be a good case for getting a government grant, or from an Aboriginal group. Why not try this? It is their claim, so why not find evidence to support it?



Because a firefighter in full kit fighting a fire always has spare time to stop what he's doing, get his gloves off and find his phone to take some video :rolleyes:

If you have an issue with what he said, take it up with him. I did put a link to his LinkedIn profile in the earlier post to you can contact his and ask him personally

I, for one, believe his account - you don't want to believe what he said, that's fine. I don't care.

Why should I be doing this? You are the one making the claim. You are the one who should be following up instead of inventing all kinds of reasons why there is no video!

You are not doing your due diligence.

It's bizarre that you have been spamming this very thread with the claim that you "are not fully convinced" and now you said that you believe the account that the birds were lighting fires.

In other words, your mind is made up, despite your earlier claims that you were "open-minded".

It seems to me you are not interested in the claims being supported any further. Rather your role here in this thread is to be an advocate for the position you have already decided and now you are merely trying to browbeat people into agreeing with you or smearing those who won't, by making bad faith claims that believing someone might be mistaken is tantamount to accusations of lying.
 
I have seen literally dozens of bolides in my lifetime, never yet managed to get one on video... no video so it didn't happen, right? Must be lying about them I guess :rolleyes:


Lots of videos, so it did and does happen, and nobody has suggested that anybody is lying about having seen them. Why would they?!

65+ Meteors Caught on Video! Perseid Meteor Shower 2018

Powerful Super Bolides Breach Earth's Atmosphere, Unleashing Blazing Lights Across the Americas

Best Meteorite Falls Caught on Camera

If I were Neil deGrasse Tyson, I might object to people referring to meteorites as meteors, except that he does so himself, so I guess it's OK:
 
Maybe the best way to get footage is to have a hat-mounted camera like a GoPro. Turn it on when the birds are coming in to the fire and just hope for the event. The camera is aimed wherever you look.

This is better than a pocket phone camera.


It has already been suggested, but since firefighters would allegedly be focusing 100% on the fire and not on the fire-spreading birds they claim to have seen, I think that observations under controlled conditions where the videographers would have time to focus and zoom in and out would be more likely to succeed, but alas:

Those Gosford and his colleagues solicited photos and videos of the behavior, they haven't yet received any usable footage. They hope to document the behavior in the field later this year, by closely studying a series of control burns administered by local firefighters.
"The more word gets out on this, the better," says Bonta. "It's only a matter of time."
Why These Birds Carry Flames in Their Beaks (NatGeo, Jan 8, 2018)
 
I think they might be mistaken.

Good, an honest answer

Please articulate your opinion as to what you think Nathan Ferguson saw that you think he mistook for kites "seizing burning sticks in their beaks, sometimes switching them to their talons, transporting them over 50 meters, dropping them, and, thus, igniting unburned grass".

How do we know the firefighters in question used a Samsung A54?

I made no claim as to what phones they might use, I was simply replying to your YOUR claim that it could have been done faster, using the only phone I have.

I tested my claim, and found that I was right.

Perhaps instead of using a Samsung A54, they could use a Go-Pro as William Parcher suggests, or a drone as I and others have suggested, or some body-cam that I imagine would have uses other than recording birds lighting fires.

That would be a good look. Firefighters at a fire-front flying drones around to take videos of birds :rolleyes:

There would surely be a good case for getting a government grant, or from an Aboriginal group. Why not try this? It is their claim, so why not find evidence to support it?

Good idea. Why don't you suggest it to the authors of the paper?

Why should I be doing this? You are the one making the claim. You are the one who should be following up instead of inventing all kinds of reasons why there is no video!

You are not doing your due diligence.

I already have, and so far, I have found no reason to doubt his account, so I need no further clarification of it.

You, on the other hand, have now made the positive claim that Mr. Ferguson is mistaken, if you want clarification beyond what he has already said, then is up to you to seek it out.

It's bizarre that you have been spamming this very thread with the claim that you "are not fully convinced" and now you said that you believe the account that the birds were lighting fires.

Well, since actually reading some of the eye-witness reports, I've changed my mind, and I am no longer unconvinced.

It seems to me you are not interested in the claims being supported any further.

Of course I'm interested in additional evidence - who wouldn't be?

However, I do not consider video evidence to be the Holy Grail, the be-all-and-end-all of evidence. I have no trouble believing personal, first hand accounts when they come from experienced and credible witnesses.
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Good, an honest answer

Please articulate your opinion as to what you think Nathan Ferguson saw that you think he mistook for kites "seizing burning sticks in their beaks, sometimes switching them to their talons, transporting them over 50 meters, dropping them, and, thus, igniting unburned grass".

Who knows? There were a lot of birds around, right? 100s of them! He was busy fighting a fire while birds were trying to rummage around and gather tasty morsels to eat. Some of the birds picked up food, some of them may have picked up sticks mistaking it for food. It was probably a pretty confusing situation. In addition, he could see a bird dropping a burning stick because the bird doesn't want to get singed with the fire, rather than because it intended to start a new fire.


I made no claim as to what phones they might use, I was simply replying to your YOUR claim that it could have been done faster, using the only phone I have.

It's a totally irrelevant point, because nobody cares how long it takes you to use your particular phone. You are the one making the claim that there is not enough time to get any footage of a bird flying down, picking up a burning stick with its beak, transferring it to its talons and then flying 50 metres with it, dropping it on unburned areas for the purpose of more hunting in private.

I tested my claim, and found that I was right.

Not remotely interesting.



That would be a good look. Firefighters at a fire-front flying drones around to take videos of birds :rolleyes:

Of course it would be a good look. The claim is that these birds are spreading fire!!!

One of the important points about this is whether the fire brigade have to give serious attention to how birds spread fire. Getting video evidence of them doing it would be a very good look indeed! :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Good idea. Why don't you suggest it to the authors of the paper?



I already have, and so far, I have found no reason to doubt his account, so I need no further clarification of it.

You, on the other hand, have now made the positive claim that Mr. Ferguson is mistaken, if you want clarification beyond what he has already said, then is up to you to seek it out.



Well, since actually reading some of the eye-witness reports, I've changed my mind, and I am no longer unconvinced.

Huh!? You hadn't read it before?

Of course I'm interested in additional evidence - who wouldn't be?

However, I do not consider video evidence to be the Holy Grail, the be-all-and-end-all of evidence. I have no trouble believing personal, first hand accounts when they come from experienced and credible witnesses.
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Good for you. I've stated what would satsify me, and my position remains unchanged.

You initially hinted that the stories were not enough and even hinted, without being able to bring yourself to say it, that you would also require video evidence. Then you finally read the paper and were immediately convinced by the stories. Well, okay then. But I don't consider that to be a very skeptical way of approaching the question.
 
Who knows? There were a lot of birds around, right? 100s of them! He was busy fighting a fire while birds were trying to rummage around and gather tasty morsels to eat. Some of the birds picked up food, some of them may have picked up sticks mistaking it for food. It was probably a pretty confusing situation. In addition, he could see a bird dropping a burning stick because the bird doesn't want to get singed with the fire, rather than because it intended to start a new fire.

Multiple and repeated observations, and he's getting wrong... every... single... time ? Not even remotely plausible.

It's a totally irrelevant point, because nobody cares how long it takes you to use your particular phone. You are the one making the claim that there is not enough time to get any footage of a bird flying down, picking up a burning stick with its beak, transferring it to its talons and then flying 50 metres with it, dropping it on unburned areas for the purpose of more hunting in private.

FTFY.

Huh!? You hadn't read it before?

I had read some accounts but not all of them... and I still have not read all of them


You initially hinted that the stories were not enough and even hinted, without being able to bring yourself to say it, that you would also require video evidence. Then you finally read the paper and were immediately convinced by the stories. Well, okay then. But I don't consider that to be a very skeptical way of approaching the question.

I have changed my mind... its allowed. Opinions are not immutable... well, at least mine aren't.
 
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Well, since actually reading some of the eye-witness reports, I've changed my mind, and I am no longer unconvinced.

Huh!? You hadn't read it before?


Scientific American has an excellent article about this phenomenon:
Have you ever noticed that when you present people with facts that are contrary to their deepest held beliefs they always change their minds? Me neither. In fact, people seem to double down on their beliefs in the teeth of overwhelming evidence against them. The reason is related to the worldview perceived to be under threat by the conflicting data.

Creationists, for example, dispute the evidence for evolution in fossils and DNA because they are concerned about secular forces encroaching on religious faith. Antivaxxers distrust big pharma and think that money corrupts medicine, which leads them to believe that vaccines cause autism despite the inconvenient truth that the one and only study claiming such a link was retracted and its lead author accused of fraud. The 9/11 truthers focus on minutiae like the melting point of steel in the World Trade Center buildings that caused their collapse because they think the government lies and conducts “false flag” operations to create a New World Order. Climate deniers study tree rings, ice cores and the ppm of greenhouse gases because they are passionate about freedom, especially that of markets and industries to operate unencumbered by restrictive government regulations. Obama birthers desperately dissected the president's long-form birth certificate in search of fraud because they believe that the nation's first African-American president is a socialist bent on destroying the country.
How to Convince Someone When Facts Fail - Why worldview threats undermine evidence (Scientific American, Jan 1, 2017)


This is the reason why everything we know about how unreliable eyewitness reports are (post 635) won't dissuade anybody from believing that their particular eyewitnesses are telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, be it about Bigfoot, alien vessels from outer space or fire-spreading birds.

In these examples, proponents' deepest held worldviews were perceived to be threatened by skeptics, making facts the enemy to be slayed. This power of belief over evidence is the result of two factors: cognitive dissonance and the backfire effect. In the classic 1956 book When Prophecy Fails, psychologist Leon Festinger and his co-authors described what happened to a UFO cult when the mother ship failed to arrive at the appointed time. Instead of admitting error, “members of the group sought frantically to convince the world of their beliefs,” and they made “a series of desperate attempts to erase their rankling dissonance by making prediction after prediction in the hope that one would come true.” Festinger called this cognitive dissonance, or the uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts simultaneously.
In their 2007 book Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), two social psychologists, Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson (a former student of Festinger), document thousands of experiments demonstrating how people spin-doctor facts to fit preconceived beliefs to reduce dissonance. Their metaphor of the “pyramid of choice” places two individuals side by side at the apex of the pyramid and shows how quickly they diverge and end up at the bottom opposite corners of the base as they each stake out a position to defend.


Only skepticism keeps the majority of us from sticking to the view that nothing so far proves that birds spread fire. Instead of falling prey to Tavris and Aronson's "pyramid of choice," digging our heels in and claiming that Birds don't spread fire!, we stick to what is known about the (un)reliability of eyewitnesses. The continued lack of video evidence may make our skepticism of the claim grow, but the same continued lack of video evidence even after serious attempts to obtain it has the curious effect on people who believe in the claim that their resistance to the facts presented grows stronger than ever.

In a series of experiments by Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan and University of Exeter professor Jason Reifler, the researchers identify a related factor they call the backfire effect “in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.” Why? “Because it threatens their worldview or self-concept.” For example, subjects were given fake newspaper articles that confirmed widespread misconceptions, such as that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. When subjects were then given a corrective article that WMD were never found, liberals who opposed the war accepted the new article and rejected the old, whereas conservatives who supported the war did the opposite ... and more: they reported being even more convinced there were WMD after the correction, arguing that this only proved that Saddam Hussein hid or destroyed them. In fact, Nyhan and Reifler note, among many conservatives “the belief that Iraq possessed WMD immediately before the U.S. invasion persisted long after the Bush administration itself concluded otherwise.”


The same thing has happened after the the release of the ODNI report about the 'Havana syndrome' three months ago. Some people are so much more determined that the U.S. diplomats and spies were attacked and simply ignore the fact that the vast majority of cases have actually been explained and the cause was never attacks with directed energy weapons. The people who believed that they were attacked and the doctors who helped convince them that they were are the least likely people to give up the belief.

By the way, I highly recommend Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me). I haven't read When Prophecy Fails.
 
I decided to have a look at the Twitter feed of one of the authors of that paper.

Link

There is some video and discussion, and apparently Adam Rutherford is interested and included mentions of the fire-birds in one of his books.

But no video of the actual behaviour that is contested.
 
That would be a good look. Firefighters at a fire-front flying drones around to take videos of birds : rolleyes :

Presumably the fire department, not being complete idiots, would not be using some short-range quadcopter controlled from the front itself. Because that would be very obviously stupid.

It should go without saying that they'd want to use some kind of high altitude fixed-wing drone with a long loiter time, controlled by someone well away from the fire front. It should go without saying, but here we are.

I mean, fire-spotting aviation is already a thing that firefighters do. Honestly I'm surprised they're not already using such drones for this kind of work.

And actually I was thinking the researchers would be making these particular drone flights (in coordination with the firefighting efforts, of course).
 
The birds are apparently smart enough to know there is no reason to start a fire when there is already a good one going.
They may even be smart enough to know that it's not a good idea to get your photo taken when you're in the middle of starting a bushfire.
 
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I was at a falconry display last week, and it was stated as fact that Black Kites are known to spread forest fires. I didn't interrogate the speaker demanding references, though.
 
I was at a falconry display last week, and it was stated as fact that Black Kites are known to spread forest fires. I didn't interrogate the speaker demanding references, though.

I'm stunned at how pervasive this is.

It reminds me of Jonathon Swift's "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes."
 
Bob Gosford (see posts 721, 729, 738 and 745) still doesn't seem to have come up with videos of fire-spreading birds. Instead, he retweets this old article of his, July 2, 2023:

The Northern Myth
The trouble with ****-hawks – the fire-spreading raptors of northern Australia.
An edited presentation to the Joint Conference of the Societies of Ethnobiology & Economic Botany, University of Wisconsin, June 2018.
More here: https://thenorthernmyth.com/2018/06...-firespreading-raptors-of-northern-australia/
@SofEthnobiology
#birds


I have no idea why he retweets this reference to his article from 2018 (full of photos but none of fire-spreading birds), but he does have a penchant for bizarre stories about the interaction of birds and humans - and for retweeting references to his own old articles about those stories:
New (well, an oldie & a goodie) post @TheNorthernMyth
...
https://twitter.com/bgosford/status/1676604985973305346
The Northern Myth Jul 5
Bird of the Week: the Bush Stone Curlew as a harbinger of death - from @TheNorthernMyth archives, 2010.
Among many Australian Aboriginal cultures the Bush Stone-Curlews have close associations with foreboding, augury and death.
Bird of the Week: the Bush Stone Curlew as a harbinger of death (The Northern Myth, Sep 27, 2010)
#BirdsOfTwitter
#Tiwi
July 5, 2023

At least, he doesn't attempt to prove that all Aboriginal myths are factual ...

This is another one of his old articles that he recently retweeted: Bird of the week: The Killer Owls of Durham County – revisited (The Northern Myth, December 13th, 2010)

Otherwise, I can sympathize with many of his ideas. He is against privatization of water, the abuse of Aborigines, and he hates Rod DeSantis! :)
If he could, he would probably send a trained fire-spreading raptor to make DeSantis burn in hell.
 
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'Tis the season ...

Perhaps instead of using a Samsung A54, they could use a Go-Pro as William Parcher suggests, or a drone as I and others have suggested, or some body-cam that I imagine would have uses other than recording birds lighting fires.
That would be a good look. Firefighters at a fire-front flying drones around to take videos of birds :rolleyes:


These Fireball-Dropping Drones Tame Wildfires
(Mashable on YouTube, Nov 11, 2021 - 4:17 min)

How Drones Are Changing the Way We Fight Wildfires
(Mashable on YouTube, Sep 25, 2023 - 7:04 min)

Drones vs. California's wildfires: How they're helping firefighters
(CNET on YouTube, Sep 2, 2018 - 3:57 min)

Drone gets up and personal with Eagle (CP24 on YouTube - 21 sec)

This year, no Bonta or Gosford sightings yet, from what I understand.
 
This video is dumber than most:
In this "Wild World" episode, explore the astonishing tactics of fire-starting birds in Australia. Discover how species like the black kite, whistling kite, and brown falcon use fire to hunt, turning a natural disaster into a strategic advantage. Learn about other animals' ingenious survival methods during wildfires, from kangaroos and chimpanzees to tortoises that save others. Witness the incredible adaptability and resourcefulness of wildlife in the face of destruction.
The Birds That Spread Wildfires: Australia's Craftiest Predators! (WildWorld on YouTube, June 25, 2024 - 6:30 min.)

Astonishing indeed, but unfortunately the only slightly astonishing thing to witness in the video is a chimp that somebody has given a box of matches and taught how to use them. As for the tortoises that allegedly save others, it gets even dumber in the video:
3:15: Chimpanzees are not afraid of fire at all. When they try to avoid it, they remain completely calm and do not panic. Fires do not cause them stress, and turtles have even reached a whole new level: They have learned to save other animals from fires. For example, the gopher tortoise digs burrows that can become an excellent shelter for about 350 species of animals during a disaster. Just think, while someone benefits exclusively for themselves during a fire, turtles selflessly care for others. They even don't mind when someone invades their own homes.


I hate the many YouTube videos ascribing human motivation to animals.
It is possible to find actual examples of animals with behaviors akin to human altruism:

I just can't stand it when examples are obviously made up as in the case of tortoises in this video.
These are two of the dumbest video texts I've seen, and they're obviously false advertising:
Bee Stings Human and then Apologizes (Your Daily Dose Of Internet on YouTube, Sep 9, 2022 - 2:32 min.)

Octopus Thanks The People Who Saved His Life (The Dodo on YouTube, July 28, 2019 - 3:08 min.)

It is clearly not what the actual footage shows!
But let's get back to the birds. The WildWorld footage also doesn't back up the text, i.e. there aren't any fire-starting and/or fire-spreading birds:
5:54: While the feathered creatures have not yet learned to start fires themselves, this in no way diminishes their ingenuity. After all, they were able to figure out how to extract maximum benefit for themselves from such a dangerous and all destroying catastrophe, this definitely deserves attention. Maybe someday, one of the animals will figure out how to put out these fires.


Maybe some day, humans will stop falling for nonsensical claims about the ingenuity of animals that are nothing but clickbait.
Some of the comments tell us that there are people out there who have reached that evolutionary level of (un)common sense:
"you were tight at the beginning of the video , NONSENSE !"
"Didn’t show a bird flying with fire and Tr owing it somwhere else, BS ….."
"********"
"You lie"
 
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Keep blathering about firebirds Dann.Gets old:rolleyes:

Two academic researchers report fire-spreading. Anthropologist Kim Akerman recounts having observed single Black Kites spreading fire twice during grass fires in WA (Table 1:Records 11 and 12; Supplementary Report 5). Anthropological linguist Denise Angelo relates having learned about fire-spreading from Aboriginal people and subsequently witnessing it on several occasions during her extensive bush work in the Katherine, NT region (Eussen and Angelo 2003; Martin 2004; Table 1:Record 9; Supplementary Report 4). It was well known to local firefighters, who attributed to raptors the potential to re-ignite already contained fires, a common and significant complaint among NT land managers (see Discussion).

Two eyewitnesses report intentional, cooperative fire-spreading. Bob White (Table 1:Record 16), while fighting a bushfire in the Roper River, NT region, watched a small group of raptors—presumably Black Kites—pick up numerous smouldering sticks and transport them ahead of a fire front, successfully helping the blaze spread up a small valley. “MJ,” a Kimberley, WA cattle station caretaker manager (Table 1:Record 17; Supplementary Report 7), saw kites working together to move a late dry season fire across a river by picking up, transporting, and dropping small, burning sticks in grass, which immediately ignited in several places. The experience resulted in an uncontrollable blaze that destroyed part of the station's infrastructure. The observer later saw the larger group of hundreds of kites that had gathered for the fire actively pursuing prey in the intentionally burned area.
https://bioone.org/journals/journal...ern-Australia/10.2993/0278-0771-37.4.700.full

https://blog.nature.org/2018/01/12/australian-firehawk-raptors-intentionally-spread-wildfires/

You give no credence to eyewitnesses and show disrespect across the board.
 
I give credence to eye witnesses of fantastical events when their accounts are backed up by actual evidence. This thread started more than six years ago, and there's still no footage of what eyewitnesses claim to have seen
You give credence to eyewitnesses when they back up your favourite fantasy, which is setting the bar as low as it gets.
I have posted enough about eyewitness accounts in this thread already.
I don't show respect to people who don't take this into account and get hissy fits when their favourite fantasies are confronted with the fact that there is still no objective evidence of fire-spreading birds.

"The observer later saw the larger group of hundreds of kites that had gathered for the fire actively pursuing prey in the intentionally burned area."
That is a credible eye-witness report: an observer observing something that actually happens all the time and has been documented. But then everything is ruined when the interpretation starts: "the intentionally burned area." Yeah, right! As if repeating the claim makes it more credible.

Not even Bob Gosford seems to believe seriously in the idea anymore, and he appears to have given up on documenting it (see post 721), so why repeat the same old stories without a shred of evidence of fire-spreading birds?
Come again when you have actual footage of birds spreading fire. And stop repeating your nonsense about lack of respect.
 
Who gives FF about footage except you. Get over it.
You make categorical pronouncements and you have ZERO evidence the eye witnesses are mistaken.
You simply don't have the experience, knowledge or competence to be a knowledgeable skeptic on this topic.
 
Just needling Dann on his distain for observation as a key aspect of science. So is speculation based on sound biological principals ....it took a long time for a verified existence of Darwin's Moth to surface....not a video yet invented and photography in infancy.
Let's see
https://www.calacademy.org › specimens-in-focus › dar...
darwin's moth from www.calacademy.org
The giant hawkmoth, endemic to Madagascar, was discovered in 1882. Its existence, however, was predicted 20 years earlier—and nearly 5,700 miles away—by ...
 
Keep on needling. You keep forgetting that at this point photography is no longer in its infancy and your favourite fantasy is based on old myths and wishful thinking instead of on sound biological principles.

Why didn't you repeat this one?
Who gives FF about footage except you.



ETA 1: I think you have mentioned the moth story before, so let me explain to you, very thoroughly, why and how it's a very different story than your favorite fairy tale about fire-spreading raptors:
Because of the discovery of the "comet orchid (Angraecum sesquipedale), a rare Malagasy flower with its nectar stored at the bottom of a 30-centimetre-long (12 in) tube," Darwin predicted that "there must be moths with probosces capable of extension to a length of between 10 and 12 inches! [25 and 30 cm]" (Wikipedia)
A moth would need a proboscis of that length to feed from the orchid, and the orchid would need a creature like that to spread its pollen, i.e. be fruitful and multiply. I know too little about entomology and ornithology to say why it had to be a moth instead of a butterfly or a hummingbird, but I guess they probably tend to have shorter probosces (or tongues) than moths.

However, the point here is that no such or similar creature is needed for bushfires to spread! They can do so on their own or the wind can do it for them. No fire-spreading birds are needed to explain how it happens:
An ember attack is when, during a bushfire, embers (also known as firebrands) such as burning twigs, bark fragments, moss or leaves become temporarily airborne and are carried by winds in a cluster.
Ember Attack (Wikipedia)


Darwin's "speculation [was] based on sound biological principals principles" Yours isn't.
Notice that the Wikipedia article isn't called Raptor attack and that it doesn't mention birds.

ETA 2:
Just needling Dann on his distain for observation as a key aspect of science.


This is another thing that both you and smartcooky got totally wrong: I don't disdain observation as a key aspect of science, but unlike you I don't think that an aspect of science should replace science. Giovanni Schiaparelli observed canals on Mars and Charles E. Burton even made drawings of them. Fleischmann and Pons observed nuclear fusion at room temperature.
Their observations became an aspect of science by being debunked.
 
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