-- Incredulous --

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The vast majority of readers here no doubt know the Mason Spencer story which, in a sense, initiated the whole modern-day Ivory-bill saga back in Louisiana in April 1932, but for the few who may not, always worth a re-telling. The following version comes from Tim Gallagher's "The Grail Bird":

"The next time the ivory-bill reared its beautiful head was in the early 1930s, in a huge tract of virgin timber along Louisiana's Tensas River. Mason Spencer, a country lawyer and state legislator from the wilds of northeastern Louisiana, was visiting the director of the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries at his headquarters in Baton Rouge. At one point the director asked him how the moonshine was in his area. "One of our game wardens must be drinking it," he said, "because he says he sees ivory-bills there."
""He's right. I've seen them myself," replied Spencer.
Incredulous, the director drew up a collecting permit for Spencer and challenged him to prove it. A short time later, Spencer came back with a freshly shot male ivory-bill and, as legend has it, flung it down on the director's desk."

In modern-day parlance, "DOH!!"

[ Word of the incident filtered back to Arthur Allen at Cornell, and three years later the famous Singer Tract expedition was launched. ]

So began the ornithological story that refuses to die...
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