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 ...
Bkmk
Is that the species with the funny laugh?
Bookmark
No. You are confusing it the Woody Woodpecker.
And the DOJ will not do anything about the white-billed peckerwood who moved in the White House a few weeks ago.
And the DOJ will not do anything about the white-billed peckerwood who moved in the White House a few weeks ago.
And the DOJ will not do anything about the white-billed peckerwood who moved in the White House a few weeks ago.
The last time I saw one, it was sitting on the shoulder of Big Foot.
Seriously, there have been reported sightings of the bird in the swamps of Louisiana and on timber land in Alabama. Most reports of researchers I’ve read seem to look in most easily accessible land while never venturing off the beaten paths.
I suspect, just as many birds and animals thought extinct but of which sightings have eventually been reported, they have been pushed into smaller and smaller habitats where humans seldom venture. And of course they make themselves scarce when the hear the sounds of human activity. They are there, they just don’t want to be seen.
Screw all the other Woodpeckers!
It looks similar to the Red-Cockaded Woodpecker,
that is not uncommon but often mistaken for the Ivory-Billed.
“...looks similar to the Red-Cockaded Woodpecker...”
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And also the Pileated Woodpecker.
“...looks similar to the Red-Cockaded Woodpecker...”
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And also the Pileated Woodpecker.
and also the Blunt-billed woodpecker
and distantly related to the Auger-billed clam sucker
What did Rush call her? The Arkansas Broadbeam, I think.
VP Kamala is miffed. “Why is there no official bird named after me? I think I have a good idea why..”
The red cockaded is vastly different. Pileated and Ivory is akin to a crow and raven in appearance and difference; they fool lots of people.
Piliated, not cockaded.
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