Originally published in 2005.

Paid $4.89 for used hardcover (no jacket) from Thriftbooks.com on 1/21/2022.

NOTE: Great review by Goodreads reader J.K. Grice

Month of March 2022 - Nature

The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker by Tim Gallagher (2005), 1st edition, hardcover (no jacket), 272 pages.

I happened to be in the right place, at the right time, on the right day, for 10 seconds on one hot summer day in 1979. I was 14 years old and living on Cow Bayou, in Southeast Texas, when I saw it fly and land on our neighbor’s cabin window…the largest woodpecker I had ever seen, with a black and white body and red on its head. As he admired himself through the mirrored window, I admired him while standing between two sweet gum trees.

Little did I know that would be the last time I’d ever see what I now know was most likely the “Good God”, pileated woodpecker, not actually the “Lord God”, ivory-billed woodpecker, since, according to this book, the ivory-billed woodpecker was nearly extinct, even back then in 1979, with only a handful sightings ever recorded since 1935. Even the pileated woodpecker has become a rare sighting around here. My mom last seen one land across the bayou, on an old dead cypress tree, about 3 years ago.

There has been only one recorded sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker in Texas back in April 1966 in the Big Thicket National Preserve. It is interesting to note that, in October 1974, the 84,550-acre Big Thicket National Preserve was created due to that one sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker in 1966 by John V. Dennis, even though it was not believed and the sighting renounced by Ornithologist Jim Tanner. (p. 21)

The search for the ivory-billed woodpecker was real and it was serious cut-throat business among the enthusiast birdwatchers and the Ornithologists out there. Without solid proof of sighting a rare bird, the credibility of their whole profession could hang in the balance. At the same time, if you spotted one, you kept it secret and tried to get the photos or the sound recordings yourself or risked someone else getting the credit, or worse case scenario, finding hundreds of birdwatchers flying in from all over the world to see this bird, destroying the habitat.

This list shows just how elusive the ivory-billed woodpecker really was:
1944 - a pair in the Singer Tract, Madison Parish, Louisiana
1950’s - east of Pensacola, Florida
1955 - a pair in Florida
1958 - one in Thomasville, Georgia
1971 - a pair in the Atchafalaya Swamp, west of Baton Rouge, Louisiana (polaroid photo shot by Fielding Lewis)
1975 - one crossing a highway in the Atchafalaya Swamp 20 miles west of Baton Rouge, Louisiana
1977-78 - a pair east of Catahoula, in the Atchafalaya Basin
1987 - Atchafalaya Basin by Fielding Lewis, guy who shot polaroid in 1971
1999 - Pearl River Wildlife Management area near Slidell, in southeastern Louisiana, an hour’s drive from new Orleans
2000 - one at Pearl River, Louisiana (Mary)
2000 - one at Three Rivers Wildlife Management Area, Louisiana (within a couple weeks of each other-same person, Mary)
2003 - Arkansas’s White River National Wildlife Refuge (Mary)
2004-2005 - one or possibly two ivory-billed woodpeckers sighted only a handful of times (about 7) very briefly flying here or there by teams of Ornithologists and bird watchers, including the author and his friend, Bobby, over a period of 2 years at Bayou de View in the Cache River National Park (eastern Arkansas)...still no photographs, no videos and no sound recordings, except for maybe a couple double drums that were inconclusive.

So, only 3 pictures of the ivory-billed woodpecker ever recorded in the whole wide world of this bird from the Singer Tract in 1935, Cuba in 1948 and a questionable polaroid snapshot from the Atchafalaya Basin in 1971? Only one 1935 sound recording and one 00:31 second video? (which are online, see below)

What is the status of the ivory-billed woodpecker today, seventeen years after this book has been published?

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region Louisiana Ecological Services Field Office Lafayette, Louisiana, Recovery Plan report dated April 16, 2010, the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker is considered “extinct”. There have been no sightings or signs anywhere in the U.S. since 2005; therefore, there can be no recovery plan.


https://ecos.fws.gov/docs/five_year_review/doc6021.pdf


Other books mentioned that might be worth looking into:

“Eskimo Year”
“Iceland Summer”
“Birds in the Wilderness”
(p. 10, all by George Miksch Sutton)

“Wild America” by Roger Tory Peterson

“Tales of a Louisiana Duck Hunter” by Lewis Fielding (a.k.a. Chief who lived in Atchafalaya Basin and who took the 1971 polaroid picture of the ivory-billed woodpecker. (p. 107)

“The Land of the Giants” by Greg Guirard…a Cajun author and photographer (on pgs. 136-139 in “The Grail Bird”, the author provides interesting info on the village of Bayou Chene and how the levees built in the 1930’s rerouted yearly flood waters into the village, forcing the people to desert the area. Today, homes lie under sediment washed in year after year after year. The only thing kept dug out and cared for is the village cemetery. He then makes it to Fausse Point, land of my Cajun ancestors. In summer of 2017, we made the drive around and about that levee and got road blocked a couple of times, just like the author claimed. We’d drive up some private road to the tops of the levee and drive the top for a while, then head down a dirt road to the bottom again and drive that a while. I didn’t know there were TRAILS! We drove to Lake Fausse Pointe State Park, but it was still closed down at that time due to what they called an “inland tropical depression”..not even a hurricane, from the summer before, in August 2016. It caused one of the highest recorded floods of all time for that area.

WEBSITES

All About Birds Website (Cornell Lab of Ornithology), link to hear a 1935 recording of the sound and a little short 00:31 second video, both provided by Arthur Allen, along with photos and facts about the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker:

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ivory-billed_Woodpecker/overview


Audubon website, Tim Gallagher’s blog of his search of the ivory-billed woodpecker in Cuba, link:

https://www.audubon.org/section/chasing-ivory-bill?page=1


Mary Scott’s, birdingamerica.com, is no longer a viable website. She now has the “Birdchick Blog”:

http://www.birdchick.com/

Mary gave up being a corporate lawyer and became a Web Designer so she can work from home or anywhere while she went ghost-bird chasing, looking for some of the most rare and potentially extinct birds, including the ivory-billed woodpecker.


NOTES ON THE IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKERS IN 2005

* Nomadic by nature, a “disaster species”, showing up in areas with a lot of recently killed trees.
* Holes are larger and more oval than ones created by the pileated woodpecker
* Large lateral grooves in the bark of trees, signs of the woodpecker trying to remove the bark to get to the insects behind, especially fond of the beetle larvae
* Woodpeckers are more active and vocal in spring and winter, and more visible because of trees being bare.
* Sightings were crossing I-10 somewhere along the 20-mile Atchafalaya Swamp Bridge between Baton Rouge and Lafayette...back in 2005
* Sightings in the Atchafalaya Basin NOTE: What you see today is nearly 100% 2nd growth. The basin had been pretty much clear-cut by the middle of the 20th century beginning right after the Civil War when “a lot of land and lumber companies in the North were practically given the land down here.” (per author Greg Guirard, p. 138).
* Believed to have thrived in “virgin” forests before clear-cutting became the norm
* About 6 square mile territory

PERSONAL NOTES

On page 143, the author writes, as he’s driving around the levees and back-roads of Louisiana: “I’d hate to get nailed for trespassing and have some police chief with a fifty-two-inch gun belt run my ass out of town or shoot me in the foot and leave me for dead.”

How funny! That is the stigma of Louisiana people, in general. My Uncle James used to say, “You never want to get stopped by those Louisiana policeman. They’ll have two or three stopped at one time and they want cash right then and there or they’ll haul your ass to jail.” And after his brother died (my Uncle Shelton), someone came and disassembled his covered parking and rode off with it, while everyone was away attending the funeral. Haha...how crazy! His death had been reported as an accidental death, even though he was extremely weak and riddled with severe osteoarthritis, when they found his heavy dresser on top of him. My Aunt Robbie told me that his Rolex watch and other gold pieces also went missing. That was back in 2002, so yes, that’s the stigma of Louisiana.

PHOTO TAKING TIP USING YOUR CELL PHONE & BINOCULARS

P. 169-70: Use a pocket size digital camera, hold it to the eyepiece of a spotting scope or binoculars…take a telephoto shot. WHAT? And he says he’s seen pictures good enough to publish in books or magazines. I’m sure this can be done on a Samsung, but definitely not the iPhone 12 Pro Max. The quality of my photos from my phone SUCK compared to my son’s Samsung cell phone. See the YouTube on exactly how to do this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=9KWB46buByA&feature=youtu.be ( )

I remember reading an article in The New Yorker seven years ago about the initial sighting of the widely-regarded- as-extinct ivory-billed woodpecker that sparked the Big Search. It was a fascinating article and it really resonated with me. However, with my mind being consumed by library school at the time, I soon forgot about it and moved on to the matters at hand. Fast forward to the present. Anxious to feed my ever-growing obsession with birds, I was combing the library stacks for bird books one day when I discovered this gem by Tim Gallagher, editor of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's publication Living Bird. Early on in the book, I experienced some doubt regarding Gallagher's ability to convey the riveting excitement of the ivory-billed search. However, he came through and pretty soon I was wrapped up in this gripping tale. While this is not high literature by any means (I am sure it was written to appeal to both readers and non-readers alike), it effectively describes a monumental event in ornithological history (and beyond), that of the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker. The bird has been a symbol for decades of not only the essence of wildness, but also the short-sightedness of logging companies, government agencies, early ornithologists, and ordinary citizens when it comes to defending and protecting wildlife. For many people proving the existence of this bird means proving that not all is completely lost yet; we may still be able to do the right thing after all when it comes to sharing this planet with so many other species of life. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys a good nature story, a good mystery, and an uplifting story of hope, all wrapped up in one single book. ( )

Tim Gallagher's The Grail Bird is a rich trove of woodpecker lore. The author admits a lifelong fascination with the elusive giant woodpecker of southern hardwood swamps and his enthusiasm is contagious. Readers are treated to a whirlwind review of Ivorybill records from Jim Tanner's meticulous fieldwork in the Singer Tract in Louisiana in the 1930s to the more controversial sound recordings made by John Dennis in the Big Thicket of Texas in the 1960s and other more recent reports. Along the way we are introduced to two schools of thought … the skeptics who are certain there are no Ivorybills left to be found and the optimists who believe that birders just don't haunt the deep swamps where the shy, reclusive birds that have survived now take refuge. Although Gallagher, employed by the prestigious Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, understands that by casting his lot with the optimists he may be lumped with the Bigfoot chasers and "Nessie" nuts, he gamely forges ahead.

In the first half of the book, Gallagher revisits past Ivorybill haunts across the south and interviews the dwindling few who can make a credible case for having seen an Ivorybill in the wild. Upon returning to New York, Gallagher learns of an intriguing sighting by a lone kayaker deep in the Arkansas bottomland swamp. Predictably, he turns around and heads south again. He quickly assembles a small search party and is soon trailing the kayaker among the cypress and tupelo. The second half of the book recounts Gallagher's search for the grail bird. His narrative moves quickly (especially for a description of what is essentially sitting and waiting for a bird to appear) and meanders into examinations of the implications of extinction and refinding an extinct bird, the role of skepticism in fieldwork and ornithology, and the importance of acknowledging how little we actually know about how birds make their way in a world so dramatically shaped by man. A true quest story and recommended for birders or anyone interested in the relationship between humans and the creatures they have driven to extinction. ( )

Well written and it explains the rediscovery of the bird well. ( )

A fascinating and entertaining account of people in the South who routinely see Pileated (Oops, I mean Ivory-billed) Woodpeckers. Check out the article in Science by Bevier and Sibley and then check out the rebuttal. Holy controversy, Bat Man! ( )