-- The Ideas of March --

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Though it's tempting to say some more about the previous Pileated videos, I think I'll move along rather than further open the whole can of worms that is the Luneau video....
Once again, well over a month has passed since Cornell's last Arkansas update, nor anything new from their Mobile Team since arrival in the 'Sunshine State.' And silence on some other fronts as well. But searching continues in earnest, and if anybody's gonna locate a nesthole, this oughta be the time to do it.
Meanwhile Bill Pulliam almost waxes poetic here.

Which in turn reminds me of an old quote from Rebecca Solnit that I included here over two years ago:

"The reappearance of the [Ivory-billed] woodpecker seems like a second chance --- a chance to expand its habitat, to get it right this time. Maybe that's what links the big surprises of 2005, this sense that there can be another unexpected round, the tenth inning in which the outcome could be different; that failure and devastation are not always final...
The woodpecker was a spectacular thing unto itself, but also a message that we don't really know what's out there, even in the forests of the not-very-wild southeast, let alone the ocean depths from which previously uncatalogued creatures regularly emerge. Late last month, University of Alaska marine biologists reported seven new species found during an expedition under the arctic ice that uncovered a much richer habitat with far more fauna than anticipated...
The woodpecker is a small story; the big environmental story of our time is about extinctions and endangerments, about creatures and habitats moving toward the very brink this bird came back from; but this small story suggests that there are still grounds to hope --- to doubt that we truly know exactly what is out there and what is possible. Hope is not history's Barcalounger, as is often thought: it requires you get back out there and protect that habitat or stop that war. It is not the same as optimism, the belief that everything will probably turn out all right despite your inactivity, the same kind of inactivity that despair begets. Hope involves a sense of possibility, but with it comes responsibility."

Carry on folks, azaleas and redbuds are blooming, it's springtime in the Southeast.
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