Curlew Caper Concludes
Someone I know emailed the secretary at TBRC concerning the Eskimo Curlew photographs and was intrigued by my evidence. The secretary said he thought the color shot was colorized by Bleitz’s foundation (now the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology) that holds the copyright. He also wrote that Victor Emmanuel was present with Bleitz when the photographs were taken and the TBRC received them from Victor.
Don Bleitz died in 1986:
IN MEMORIAM: DONALD LOUIS BLEITZ
"Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, California 90007 US Donald Louis Bleitz, a Member of the A.O.U. since 1947 and an Elective Member since 1985, died 23 June 1986 in Los Angeles, California. Don Bleitz was born in Los Angeles, California, on 1 October 1915. As a professional photographer and inventor of numerous photographic devices and techniques, Don Bleitz revealed his considerable ability and deep interest in the photography of birds. During his lifetime he photographed more than 600 species of North American birds; one of his most outstanding contributions was obtaining the first good photographs ever, anywhere, of the Eskimo Curlew (J. V. Gollop 1986) in 1962. It was Don's life-long plan to publish a sumptuous, many-volumed work on the birds of North America, using his wealth of excellent colored photographs. This worthwhile project never came to fruition. He did, however, author numerous feature articles in the Saturday Evening Post, Reader's Digest, and Arizona Highways. A member of numerous scientific and civic organizations, Don Bleitz was a Life Member of the A.O.U., the Cooper Ornithological Society, and the Wilson Ornithological Club. He was a member of both the Western and the Eastern Bird Banding Associations. In 1952 he founded the Bleitz Wildlife Foundation, an organization devoted to wildlife preservation and study."
I believe the top three photographs are authentic, but I’m convinced the 4th shot (bottom picture) was assembled/manipulated from the top image. Reading this memoriam on Bleitz, perhaps we can glean some insight into Don’s motive (assuming it was him) for rendering the 4th image. He wanted to produce “a sumptuous, many-volumed work on the birds of North America, using his wealth of excellent colored photographs.” Perhaps all he wanted was a color image of an Eskimo Curlew and the only way to get one was to use one of his black-and-white images, make it appear to be a different bird and colorize it. This is pure conjecture on my part in an attempt to establish a motive, but I think it matches the evidence pretty well.
Case closed? I think so.
posted by Mike McDowell @ 11:17 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
This is a very intriguing subject. I now think that the Eskimo Curlew could have been extinct long before 1962. After reading the posts on this site, I downloaded the five photos of the Curlew and used my computer to manipulate them so I could see the details much better. It now appears to me that the bird is a mounted specimen.
Let me pose a few questions and attempt to answer them as a skeptic.
1.Why does the bird seem to be missing the foot on the leg that touches the ground?
answer: It is not apparent even when each picture is enlarged and placed in the negative, this is probably because that leg was stuck in the ground in order to keep the specimen from falling over.
2.Why is one leg raised in every single photo?
Because it gives the allusion that the bird is running along in a lively manner. There may not have been a lot that could have be done with the legs because they were dried in that approximate position.
3.Why does bird seem to be facing foward with the head turned very slightly to one side?
Because it is a mount and clear straight on photos would show a line of ruffled feathers where it was cut during the taxidermy process. I can kind of see this line in the only one that is slightly facing the camera.
4.Why are there only four photos plus one identical color photo, all by a single photographer, of such a super rare species that supposedly stayed for long periods of time in 1960, 1961, 1962, and 1963?
Because there were no real Eskimo Curlews to photograph, only Whimbrels and one photographer with access to a specimen and knowledge of the techniques of photo manipulation. Four or five fairly good pictures should be enough to get the job done and secure a place in the ornithological hall of fame.
5.How can one explain the nearly identical posture in the two separate pictures, not to mention in all the pictures?
This seems beyond probability if it were alive.
6.Could a hoax be possible with so many observers claiming to see it?
Yes, if birders were looking at Whimbrels in the field and thinking they were the Eskimo Curlews. Remember that way back then optics were not exactly what they are today and there were not as many fieldguides which illustrated the species. People still claim to see Eskimo Curlews.
7.How could one get close enough to take those kind of photos?
The bird was very tame, or the bird was stuffed and did not run away or significantly very its pose.
8.What about the 1963 specimen from Barbados?
We don't know for a fact when or where this specimen was actually taken.
9.The identical color and black and white picture; how could it have been done?
Bird does not move, camera is on a tripod with one shot left in the roll of film. Snap. Put new roll of film in while camera is firmly attached to tripod. Snap. There you go!
I challenge you to download pictures of the Little Curlew off of a Google search and use the photo editor to change them to black and white. Blur them a little if you like and then save them in a folder with the Eskimo Curlew pictures on the computer. Then run them as a slide show and you will quickly see that something is very wrong with the Eskimo Curlew.
I am not attempting to accuse or degrade anyone, only to assume the part of a skeptic in order to provide alternative explanations to this puzzling mystery. If one cannot question, then one can never know the truth.
Michael
P.S.
I also used to practice taxidermy.
To my satisfaction, I was able to demonstrate that the colorized photograph was assembled from one of the black-and-white ones. There is nothing beyond this that I can comment on.
Cheers,
Mike
I disagree with the anonymous comments above claiming that the 1962 Eskimo Curlew photos (originals here) were of a stuffed specimen. To me, the photos look quite realistic, and are very consistent with live birds.
-The body of the birds looks full and alive in all photos--stuffed specimens always look rather, well, stuffed. I think it would be very difficult to substitute a taxonomic mount for a living bird and get a realistic photo if the bird at all fills the frame.
-The photos show a detail of posture not usually executed in taxidermy, but often present in life--the folded "elbow" of the wings is tucked under the chest feathers. Living birds do this all the time, but I've not seen a mounted specimen where this was done--usually wings are outside the feathers covering the chest.
-Likewise, the folding of the wings against the tail is tight and life-like, not typical of taxidermy, where the wings are usually spread to show them. Living shorebirds fold those wings tightly against the tail until they are ready to fly, or the wings are raised in display.
*Doing a Google image search, I found a couple of photos of taxidermic mounts of stuffed Eskimo Curlews:
*First one (here, and other places)--the wings are mounted sort of folded back against the tail, but look at the clumsiness of it, and look at the puffed-out neck and chest--characteristic of taxidermy and very unlike the 1962 Texas photos
*Another photo of a mounted specimen--looks nothing like the slim, obviously living birds of the 1962 Texas photos
-Posture of the bird does vary significantly between photos, including angle of neck and small details such as the tarsi of the raised foot folded in one and more spread in another--that would be hard to do on a taxonomic specimen, where the legs would be dried and stiff.
-Likewise, the angle of the legs varies quite a bit, and the angle of the leg planted is hard to reconcile with it being used as a prop for a stuffed specimen--it is too far from vertical
-Clearly one leg is raised in photos because the bird is walking through fairly high grass. There is a photo of a Little Curlew in similar habitat, with a similar posture here, specifically this one--note the tarsi are folded on the raised foot, exactly as in one of the 1962 photos of the Eskimo Curlew.
-Both left and right foot are raised in the various photos, inconsistent with a single taxidermic mount. (The prints could have been flipped during enlargement, of course.)
-The photos are clearly of two different birds--in the three profile shots, the beak of one (here) is thicker and more curved. This is consistent with the reports at the time of two birds. There is too much consistency for fraud.
-As the blog author has concluded, the color photo is obviously a composite of a color photo of the background and a colorized version of the black-and-white photo. You can even see jagged edges where a razor blade was used to cut out along the body of the bird. No doubt this was done for aesthetic reasons. (Color film was expensive and slow back then. I did some bird photography just a few years later, in 1971, and my favorite film was fast, contrasty, grainy, ISO 400 Tri-X pan. It was great for stopping action. The 1962 photos look like they were taken with Tri-X to me.)
I had only seen the one, rather cheesy, colorized photo previously. To me, seeing multiple scans of the original photos is totally convincing of the existence of the Eskimo Curlew in 1962. (Anybody have details on the Barbados specimen, other than assertions?)
The comparison of the 1962 Eskimo Curlew photos with the recent claimed video evidence for IBWO is totally damning, I think, of the IBWO claims. Look at the excellent, sharp photos taken of a wary shorebird (actually, two of them) with 1960's technology. Contrast the smudges of the Luneau video and the Choc videos where a bird is hardly visible.
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