On June 8, 2009, I submitted a manuscript on “Cruising flight of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis)” to the Journal of Experimental Biology along with these figures and movies. The paper was rejected on August 29, 2009, based on these comments by reviewers who didn’t bother to evaluate the data analysis.

Reviewer 1 claims that the manuscript shouldn’t be published due to a lack of resolution. It’s true that the resolution is not sufficient for a novice to compare the images with clear historical photos and conclude that it’s an Ivory-billed Woodpecker, but that’s not how science is done. The resolution is sufficient to provide reliable information on wingspan, flap style, wingtip curves, flap rate, flight speed, and wing aspect ratio. The identification is based on this quantitative information and the large white patches on the dorsal surfaces of the wings that are prominent in the video. The reviewer points out that no data are provided for ducks, but an author can’t be expected to obtain a large data set in order to demonstrate something that is well known, such as the fact that the wings of ducks remain extended (or stiff) in flight; based on the flap style, an expert on the flight mechanics of birds concluded that the bird in the video is “definitely not a duck.” The reviewer mentions that citations are required to establish that there had been a misconception about the flap style. Such information does exist and was included in the Introduction of a subsequent manuscript. The reviewer claims that “sophisticated” estimates of the mass, wingspan, and wing area of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker are lacking. There exist published estimates of wingspan, wing aspect ratio, and body mass that were obtained from specimens and historical photos of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. It makes perfectly good sense to apply the best available models using the best available inputs, even if the models and inputs are less than ideal. The reviewer suggests using a relaxed wing preparation, which appears to be highly distorted (when compared with photos of the open wings of living birds) and useless for estimating morphological parameters. The reviewer requests the predicted flap rate of the Pileated Woodpecker, but the model was applied to obtain a prediction of the ratio of the flap rates of the two large woodpeckers. The reviewer asks why it’s “legitimate to assume that wingspan ratio is approximately equal to wing length,” but the actual (and very different) assumption is that the ratio of the wingspans can be approximated by the ratio of the wing lengths. The reviewer claims that the results should be presented in a specific way, but there are no rules cast in stone on how to present data. The movies clearly show the wings folding closed during the upstroke, and the flap rate can be estimated from these movies since the frame rates are specified. The wingtip curves are presented in a format similar to those published for the Pileated Woodpecker (see Fig. 3), and the other figures clearly show the characteristics described in the captions. The reviewer suggests that wind may be an issue in the flight speed estimate, but it’s stated in the manuscript that the wind was negligible, and this would obviously exclude a wind speed of 2 m/s.

Reviewer 2 feels unqualified to judge the analysis, which is actually quite simple — rocket science isn’t required to estimate the wingspan by comparing with a reference object of known length, note that the wings are folded closed during each flap, measure distance traveled and divide by elapsed time to estimate flight speed, and count flaps and divide by the elapsed time to estimate flap rate. The reviewer claims that the manuscript should be judged “by field ornithologists familiar with the species,” but no living ornithologist has significant field experience with the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

Reviewer 3 claims a lack of sufficient interest in the kinematics for publication in JEB, but Pennycuick’s flap rate data and models were published in a series of papers in that journal. Surely an application of his work to a problem of great interest would be appropriate for JEB, and in fact that is the primary reason I chose to submit a manuscript to that journal.