"There was a time when massive flocks of Passenger Pigeons blotted out the sun, and bright green Carolina Parakeets were so numerous that they looked, according to an early American pioneer, "like an atmosphere of gems." But these birds - as well as the Labrador Duck, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, the Heath Hen, and the Great Auk - now live only as tantalizing but hazy legends." "Driven by a desire to understand how and why this came to be, Christopher Cokinos embarked on ten years of detective work. Traveling from Bird Rock in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Louisiana's tangled bayous in search of those who stalked these birds and those who tried to save them, he discovered strange stories and glorious quests, tales of scientific heroism and political stupidity, of inconceivable apathy and equally astonishing personal devotion." "Much more than an account of the last days of six vanished species, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers is a window into American history. Cokinos portrays a country economically reliant on unbelievable quantities of wild birds, where market stalls overflowed with Heath Hens, fashionable women adorned their hats with entire dead birds, and nearly everyone relished a hearty pie made from Passenger Pigeons. He describes a 1935 expedition to record as many bird songs as possible across much of the United States - an unprecedented 15,000-mile journey of enormous difficulty into this country's unspoiled wilderness - and investigates a mysterious April 1999 sighting of Ivory-billed Wodpeckers, long held to be extinct. He unravels the bizarre account of the world's last wild Passenger Pigeon, and delves into an incredible plan now afoot on Martha's Vineyard to create new Heath Hens."--Jacket.