Shortly after obtaining the 2008 video, I submitted a manuscript to Proceedings B of the Royal Society that (like the PLoS ONE submission) was based on all three videos and contained predictions of the flap rate of this species that were obtained using the leading models. The chief editor assigned it to a member of the editorial board (Elizabeth Adkins-Regan), who decided to reject it without consulting with reviewers. I wrote to the chief editor and pointed out that, despite being out of focus, the 2008 video contains the strongest quantitative evidence for the persistence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker that has been obtained to date and provides interesting new facts about this species, including something that is corroborated by an overlooked historical photo. The chief editor agreed to reconsider, but I declined the offer after realizing that the board member is involved in ornithology research at Cornell. The chief editor accused me of questioning the integrity of the board member, but I was simply concerned about the possibility of influence by ornithologists at Cornell that have received large amounts of funding to obtain Ivory-billed Woodpecker data and don’t seem to be happy that I have obtained such data while they have failed to do so.

Two years later, the analysis of the 2008 video was improved and included detailed wingtip curves that were not part of the original submission. I wrote to the new chief editor (Michael P. Hassell) to enquire about submitting a new manuscript. On March 23, 2010, I submitted a manuscript based on the 2008 video on “Cruising flight of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis)” along with these figures and movies. A request for the manuscript to be assigned to a different board member was ignored, and I received the following comments on March 29:

“It is claimed that the (low quality) video used in this study shows an Ivory-billed woodpecker, based on white dorsal stripes (among other arguments). The biomechanical analysis of the video considers a few kinematic parameters: frequency, span and elevation of the wings. An abstract is not provided and a clear aim is not stated in the introduction (apart from the presentation of the first video footage of this rare bird in cruising flight). The parameter S is not constant for a bird that changes wing shape (formula 1). The result section contains several methodological elements. In my original advice, I stated that the author should be able to obtain a reliable analysis from a video of similarly low quality of a related species, whose flight characteristics were also derived from more state of the art video footage. The current study shows similar results from the pileated woodpecker, but is not clear on which quality video this was based and what the errors are. Figure 3 does not even present a length scale along the vertical axes. Likewise it is not clear in the present study what the errors are of the analysis in the kinematic description (fig. 3). This paper (after improvement) seems to be more suitable for an avian journal such as Auk.”

The board member points out that the “analysis of the video considers a few kinematic parameters” but doesn’t seem to appreciate the fact that two of these parameters (span and elevation) are actually functions of time that contain more information than a constant parameter (such as a length scale). The board member points out that a vertical scale is not provided in Fig. 3, but the time dependence is more important than the length scale, which is in fact estimated in Fig. 1. In listing the kinematic parameters, the board member omitted the flight speed, which is a key parameter for distinguishing the large woodpeckers. The board member claimed that no abstract was provided, but there is a separate place to enter the abstract when submitting to Proceedings B (and this was done). It’s surprising that the board member was not aware of submission procedures, and the presumption of a lack of awareness of the need to include an abstract suggests that an author is being regarded as having no experience in publishing and is not being taken seriously. The board member claims that no clear aim is stated in the introduction, where it is actually stated that the aim is to “present the first video footage of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in cruising flight, which provides the first data on the flap rate and flight speed and reveals that there had been a misconception about the flap style.” Since such results would clearly transcend anything that has been published on this topic since the paper by Fitzpatrick et al. claimed the rediscovery of this species, it seems that it would have been worth the board member’s time to carefully evaluate the key technical details; instead of doing this, the board member nitpicked (incorrectly) about peripheral issues. The board member implied that it doesn’t make sense to investigate the statistical dependence of flap rate on wing area, but this was convincingly established by data and analysis published in a series of papers by Pennycuick, who described a systematic approach for measuring wing area. The board member claims there is a need to test resolution, but there is no question that the bird has the distinctive flap style of a large woodpecker (the wings are folded closed during the middle of the upstroke) and an expert on woodpecker flight mechanics had no problem extracting detailed wingtip curves from this footage. It’s hard to make sense of the comment about the manuscript being more suitable for an avian journal. A board member with such credentials is undoubtedly aware that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is a hot topic and that new facts about this species would be worthy of publication in a premier scientific journal. The question is whether or not the results are correct. The board member didn’t bother to look into that question, but the manuscript should not be published in any journal if the results are wrong.