Wednesday, September 07, 2005

- Kenn Duke & Other Thoughts -

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If you're unfamiliar with it, Kenn Duke's memory of Ivory-bills in the Pearl River region of Louisiana when he was growing up (~1970-'90), as told to Mary Scott, is just one of the many intriguing anecdotal reports around:

http://www.birdingamerica.com/Ivorybill/kennduke.htm

During a brief visit to the region in 2001 with one of Mary's groups, the Pearl River Refuge struck me as good but not great IBWO habitat (due to noise levels and general human traffic/activity), but the Bogue Chitto area just north of P.R. struck me as highly promising (Van Remsen's 2002 search team came up empty-handed at both spots). And a few hours farther north, the Three Rivers Refuge area seemed like even better IBWO habitat, though to my knowledge no thorough search has ever been attempted there. Farther west, still in La., lies the huge Atchafalaya Basin region, considered some of the very best habitat anywhere. There is no shortage of places for the serious-minded to be looking -- the haystacks are aplenty; it's the number of needles to be found that is yet to be determined.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you are viewing a bird that the "authorities" keep telling you is extinct...

why no camera?

cyberthrush said...

...uhhh, believe it or not, not everybody in rural Louisiana owns cameras, especially not young people 20 years ago; cheap cameras weren't readily available back then, and generally a cheap camera is inadequate for bird photography anyway. Also, not everyone in the past (especially non-birders) have recognized the full significance there would be in capturing Ivorybills on film.