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People’s interest/fascination with the Ivory-billed Woodpecker often borders on obsessive… especially among “believers.” Might be interesting to hear how/why/when folks following the saga first got so interested in the topic. If you remember how you got drawn in, be it a year ago or 60 years ago, feel free to drop me a few sentences or paragraph explaining it. IF I get enough responses maybe(?) I can fashion them into some sort of a blog post (I’ll assume it’s OK to use your name unless you specifically say to call you “Anonymous” or some other designation, like “Louisiana Lad”). email me at cyberthrush[AT]gmail.com or just send along as a comment here.
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3 comments:
How it started for me: I was in elementary school in the late 1960s in Boston and we had a class on extinction and endangered species. I couldn’t get my head around the concept of human beings killing off an entire species, let alone a single bird. I became particularly fascinated by the Ivory-Billed. Over the 50+ years since, I have accumulated dozens of rare and unusual art pieces and carvings of the IBW. Such a beautiful bird, yet all so heartbreaking. Matt in Boston
In the 1970s, my father took me and my brother on fishing and birding trips to South GA and FL. My little brother was taking correspondence ornithology courses from Cornell before he was 10, and we received some reel to reel films of the Tanner study from Louisiana. My father encouraged us that, if we went somehwere so remote that few others had seen, we could find an Ivory-billed Woodpecker. This became one of our goals. In the 1988, Jim Kilgo authored the great book, Deep Enough for Ivorybills, and his own father had the same premise that the Pee Dee Swamp was so remote that it was possible...
Iowa woodcarver Dean Hurliman (several of you have been the lucky recipients of his life-size Ivory-bill carvings!) sent along these words as his “reaction to the rediscovery of the IBWO”:
“Tears and money were spent and sent
when the news was revealed
of the great event.
It's now been a number of years,
some still unable to shake old fears.
Many a birder still straddles the fence;
show us new video evidence.
For me, an old carver, there is no mirage;
Ivory Bills fly through pine rafters
of my garage! “
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"in paludis veritas" Dean S. Hurliman
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