Update on the Smiling Bird Rediscovery

A friend forwarded an email to me from Chris Sharpe regarding this entry about the "smiling bird" that I wrote and he would like to clarify several things for you.

My in-box is full of emails about this, some of them not so pleasant, and I have also received a number of phone calls. I wonder if [you] could post another blog that might clarify the situation. Stuart Buchart at BirdLife believes that our 2004 encounter was the first for about 40 years and it was followed by Oscar Laverde in July (?) 2005. My 2004 photos and the sound-recordings appear to be the first too. It seems that the ProAves folks have stirred up a hornets nest by appearing to take credit for Oscar Laverde's work (unwittingly perhaps, though they certainly knew of our 2004 findings). I would be happy to send some of my photographs if that would help.

I don't want to be a pain, but I also want to avoid people assuming I have somehow "stolen" data which was obtained after I had finished my own study!

Many thanks, Chris

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!