5 May 05

That Was Fast

There’s already a book out on the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker. It is entitled The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and it’s by Tim Gallagher, the editor of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s magazine Living Bird who was one of the observers of the woodpecker in the Arkansas swamp a year ago February. Coordinating the release of the news of the rediscovery must have been an interesting feat.

Posted by at 07:30 PM in Nature and Place | Link |
  1. Making him one of seven independent “sighters,”
    whose entire purpose in being on the Cache was to
    document the existence of this magnificent creature,
    and not one of whom had thought to have a camera at
    the ready. Extraordinary

    Still, if wishing can make it real,

    Miranda (whose cup is alway half empty)
    Does this have the whiff of a made-for-NPR feel-good story or what?

    Name the source: “Just take our word for it!
    Our experts have seen them and they’re there!”


    — Miranda    6. May 2005, 07:56    Link
  2. I suspect there were many cameras at the ready, but getting a shot of a shy critter in a dense swamp isn’t remotely easy, certainly harder than seeing it through a good pair of binocs, and there were many on these sorties who wanted to see it and didn’t. The TV nature specials generally involve operations of such a conspicuous nature that it would be harder yet to keep them under wraps for a year or two.

    Any respectable birder who claimed to see it and was proven wrong, or more accurately never proven lilely to be right, would have to go to condor country and commit nontoxic suicide, at least. There’s serious ego on the line. So I’m willing to grant the sightings provisional belief, pending more information. That’s further than I’ve been willing to go for the sightings over the previous two years in neighboring locations.

    The whole thing has been run like CIA operation for at least the last year. In-house people who were ordered not to tell their spouses where they were going or why, and their bosses told Not To Ask by their bosses’ bosses, the works. Makes me grin to think of it.

    And yeah, you’ll have to take my word for that… or not.

    Hell, I’m not even ordering anyone to teach The Controversy…

    — Ron Sullivan    6. May 2005, 17:13    Link
  3. Funny thing happened on the way to Mount Auburn… the Grail Bird showed up on my kitchen table! Life is good!

    — tattler    7. May 2005, 16:10    Link

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