Kints: Among Friends

"...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."

Friday, November 4, 2016

Among Friends

On October 20, my brother Brian Carlisle and I had the pleasure of attending a meeting of the Pascagoula River Basin Alliance (PRBA) at the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Reasearch Laboratory, in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. The PRBA's members are an eclectic group representing industry, state government, academia, and concerned citizens groups, as well as the Nature Conservancy. We were pleased and honored to be invited to attend, and to give a short presentation regarding our search for evidence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in the lands of the Basin. There we made some new friends, and learned about the ongoing efforts of the PRBA as stewards of the Pascagoula River Basin, which I like to call Mississippi's Last Best Place. Of tremendous importance to the wildlife of the region, we learned that the Nature Conservancy recently completed transfer of their first Forest Legacy Acquisition Project to the Mississippi Forestry Commission -- to become the 2,100 acre Leaf River State Forest, linking vital habitats along the Pascagoula River and its tributary, the Leaf River.

Now for a bit of housekeeping: repairs to my desktop computer should be completed soon, so I will be able to more easily update the blog as necessary at better quality than I am currently able, beginning with our last visit to the Stronghold on October 28.

Thanks to those of you still following our efforts here in old Ivorybill country. I look forward to the fall/winter/spring search season at hand, and to sharing our finds with you on this site. We still walk these old woods with hearts and minds open to the great Possibility.

Best wishes,
Chris

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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.