Posted on 07/22/2023 3:25:11 PM PDT by Theoria
The struggle to prove the majestic bird still exists has obsessed believers and exasperated doubters for a century. Now photographer Bobby Harrison is racing to document the species once and for all before the government declares it extinct
The bird has many names, often divinely inspired: the Lord God Bird, the Lazarus Bird, the Ghost Bird, the Grail Bird. Bobby Harrison is a religious man, but he doesn’t like any of them. He prefers to call it what it is: an ivory-billed woodpecker. “Well,” he says with a shrug, “it is just a bird, after all.”
That might seem like an undersell for someone who on this steaming August day is preparing to shove off into the humid, murky shade of an Arkansas swamp on his two-thousandth-plus search for the ivorybill, whose last-agreed-upon sighting in the United States occurred in 1944. But Harrison’s undersell has the ring of the believer: To him, the ivorybill is, like any other bird, made of hollow bones, feathers, a bill. It doesn’t have celestial powers; it’s not a messenger from on high. Instead, it’s still out in the Southern wilds, doing bird things, flying around as it always has. Harrison will tell you all this because he’s seen one. Other people will tell you, very firmly, that he has not—and the clock is now ticking for him to persuade them otherwise.
(Excerpt) Read more at gardenandgun.com ...
I’ve been chasing the Gila woodpecker nearly every day. The little devil likes to peck holes in my siding when he’s not drumming on my metal chimney cap.
A good read. I ran across the story of the Singer tract in Louisiana when I was poking around to drill a gas well there. Seems like they sold this HUGE hardwood forest to the Chicago Mill and Timber Company. They clear cut it to make, from what I have been told, everything from Model T’s to PT boats. Hardwood bottoms don’t come back in our lifetimes. Now, it is all flat swampy farmland.
I’ve dedicated my life to the pursuit of the Round-breasted Mattress Thrasher.
I’ve seen both a pileated and a red-headed woodpecker a few times at our new house. Love it.
I’ve subscribed to Garden and Gun for a long time, 15 years or more. I always say the “Gun” is in there to keep the damn Yankees out. We’re OK with some Yankees, but keep the damn Yankees.
And the “Gun” is probably a heavily engraved Beretta shotgun worth into 5 figures. I also describe it as an aspirational lifestyle magazine.
During World War II the plant operated at full capacity, making plywood, boxes, and lumber for use in defense. So many of the men employed were called by Selective Service that women were hired to work in the box factory, veneer mill and sawmill.
That’s a keeper.
Fortunately their are still huge swaths of undeveloped swamp and forest in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi where the IBWP could still be living. Most people wouldnt know one if they saw it.
They are often found digging insects out of the ears of wild dog-faced soldier ponies
They sound more like a kid tooting a clarinet
They look more like a pileated. They are far bigger than any othernative species.
You can always count on Chicago to eff things up.
Harpies are real . . .
Thanks for posting. I have read about this on and off over the years, and hope the Ivorybill is still kicking. I have seen preserved specimens of extinct species at the Field Museum in Chicago. They are a saddening and haunting sight.
Yes.
It’s closely related to the Kamalian CacklePecker
There is still a lot of swamp and forests in Alabama too. There are critters in there that are not there according to the experts. Large cats for example. Another non existent animal that’s not here is the fisher cat. Big weasel looking animal. My Great Dane killed one right in front of me. By the time I got a camera, the dogs had run off with it. I found out what it was years later.
She is the wobbly kneed pecker wrecker.
Woody was a Pileated Woodpecker. ;)
I like my dolphin tuna free;)
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