4.0
The Grail Bird
ByPublisher Description
What is it about the ivory-billed woodpecker? Why does this ghost of the southern swamps arouse such an obsessive level of passion in its devotees, who range from respected researchers to the flakiest Loch Ness monster fanatics and Elvis chasers?
Since the early twentieth century, scientists have been trying their best to prove that the ivory-bill is extinct. But every time they think they've finally closed the door, the bird makes an unexpected appearance.
To unravel the mystery, author Tim Gallagher heads south, deep into the eerie swamps and bayous of the vast Mississippi Delta, searching for people who claim to have seen this rarest of birds and following up—sometimes more than thirty years after the fact—on their sightings. What follows is his own Eureka moment with his buddy Bobby Harrison, a true son of the South from Alabama. A huge woodpecker flies in front of their canoe, and they both cry out, "Ivory-bill!" This sighting—the first time since 1944 that two qualified observers positively identify an ivory-billed woodpecker in the United States—quickly leads to the largest search ever launched to find a rare bird, as researchers fan out across the bayou, hoping to document the existence of this most iconic of birds.
"
is less an ecological study than a portrait of human obsession." —
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Grail Bird Reviews
4.0
“I really enjoyed this book! On top of being a first-hand account of the search to rediscover the ivory-billed woodpecker, it also gives some southern United States history as well. Gallagher, through thorough research, details what (parts of) the south used to look like, up until about the 1940s, when many of the final tracts of old growth bottomland hardwood forests were logged and destroyed. It was also interesting to read about the interactions he had with the people he interviewed. It felt very engaging and, as a southerner, a little nostalgic.
Honestly, there were many times that I wanted to jump in my car and make a trip to the same places Gallagher visited. I'm a casual birder at best, but dang if I wasn't ready to go kayaking in the bayous of Arkansas and Louisiana, hoping to catch a glimpse of a ghost of the old southern forests.”
About Tim Gallagher
As
was working on his book
he was among the first to sight the long-thought-extinct ivory-billed woodpecker in Arkansas, which led to a multi-million-dollar effort to confirm the sighting and protect the bird's dwindling habitat. The sighting changed the direction of the book, for which Gallagher won the Outdoor Writers Association of America's Best Book award for 2005. Gallagher is editor-in-chief of
magazine and of the
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