(image, from 1935, via Wikipedia Commons)
"Looking for an ivory-bill today takes the mediating nature of birdwatching to an even higher level, because in this case the quarry is a kind of ghost bird, a creature that does and does not exist. Birds have always been emblems that shuttled between the natural world and the man-made world, between science and poetry, between earth and sky. But the ivory-bill is even more of an in-between figure --- flying between the world of the living and the world of the dead, between the American wilderness and the modern wasteland, between faith and doubt, survival and extinction. No wonder the bird has taken on a sort of mystical character. Its physical prowess made it king of the woodpeckers. But is it a once and future king?"
-- Jonathan Rosen "The Life of the Skies" 2008-----------------------------------------------------------------
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