Kints: Seasonal Issues.2: 4 April 2016

"...the ornithologists still had serious doubts. Sutton finally put it directly: 'Mr. Spencer, you're sure the bird you're telling us about isn't the big pileated woodpecker?'

"Spencer exploded. 'Man alive! These birds I'm tellin' you all about is kints!' he shouted in their faces. 'Why, the pileated woodpecker's just a little bird about as big as that.' He held his fingers a few inches apart. 'A kint's as big as that!' he said, holding his arms wide... 'Why, man, I've known kints all my life. My pappy showed 'em to me when I was just a kid. I see 'em every fall when I go deer huntin' down aroun' my place on the Tinsaw. They're big birds, I tell you, big and black and white; and they fly through the woods like pintail ducks!'

"After Spencer's outburst, the members of the team were all believers -- not just because of his vehemence, but because his description was so accurate. Ivory-bills do not have the typical bounding flight of the pileated woodpecker. They generally fly away high and straight, with stiff flight feathers, looking very much like a pintail, and their call is a distinctive nasal kent, kent, kent -- very similar to the local name Spencer used, kint. Sutton and the others couldn't wait to get to the bayou and start searching.

"As it turned out, that was not an easy proposition..." --Gallagher, Tim. The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, pp. 10-11: "Of People and Peckerwoods."

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Seasonal Issues.2: 4 April 2016

On Monday, 4 April, I attempted yet again to access the Hutson Lake area of the northern Pascagoula WMA. While the massive flooding I had encountered on my previous visit had subsided considerably, the small creeks and sloughs were still swollen to overflow. I arrived in the cool, clear hour before dawn, and was able to drive down the previously-submerged WMA road for about a mile, until I reached a dip where a small paved area of road bisects what is normally a dark, still slough. Instead, there was this:

I dared not chance flooding my truck attempting to cross. Despite the mosquitoes, which were out in full force, it would have been a beautiful day to explore. With heavy heart I turned around, and began the hour and a half-long drive back home.

A fence along a nearby natural gas pumping station hinted at the extent of the season's earlier flooding:

Unfortunately, this was to be my last opportunity to search for the Ivorybill for a while, since this past Friday I had surgery to repair a double inguinal hernia. I will be out of work for a couple of weeks while I recover; and it shall be at least that long before I can return to the wild swamp fastnesses of the Pascagoula River Basin, and resume my search for evidence of Ivorybills there.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Our Ivorybill Library

Gallagher, Tim. 'The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.' A well-written and engrossing read by one of the few active Ivorybill searchers, documenting the "Rediscovery" in Arkansas in 2004 and the subsequent efforts to document the species there.
Hoose, Philip. 'The Race to Save the Lord God Bird.' Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004. Now a bit dated, but still a good general history of the species and its relationship with humans in both the United States and Cuba.
Jackson, Jerome A. 'In Search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.' Smithsonian Books, 2004. A true cornerstone of the literature by an expert on Ivorybills.
Snyder, Noel F.R., Brown, David E., and Clark, Kevin B. 'The Travails of Two Woodpeckers: Ivory-Bills & Imperials.' University of New Mexico Press, 2009. An important and somewhat controversial work that challenges some long-held assumptions regarding the decline of the Ivory-bill. The book also raises important questions about successful approaches to species conservation.
Steinberg, Michael K. 'Stalking the Ghost Bird: The Elusive Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Louisiana.' Louisiana State University Press, 2008.
Tanner, James T. 'The Ivory-billed Woodpecker." 2003 Dover Publications reprint of the 1942 monograph. Essential reading for the serious student of Ivorybill lore.