"...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, February 23, 2019

Mucking about the Leaf Wilderness: 18 February 2019

I took an increasingly rare opportunity to get afield on President's Day.  I spent most of the morning meandering along the ridgeline where a beech/holly/pine slope forest meets baldcypress/tupelo swamp.  Birds were quiet, though I heard and observed downy and red-bellied woodpeckers, and heard heavy tapping that was probably a pileated woodpecker.  It was cool (50's F), and windy in the trees atop Holly Ridge, as I call it, but the swamp was still. 


 Looking down into the swamp from Holly Ridge.

 Beaver work on a pine along Holly Ridge.  I found more beaver sign like this along the ridge.


 An impressive beech.


 Pine snag, one of many in the Leaf.  The area is still littered with pines killed in the passing of Hurricane Katrina.

 Young spruce pine.


Extensive scaling on a dead tupelo.  Likely pileated woodpecker work.  The species is very active in the Leaf Wilderness.



Heavy rains later in the week will likely render much of the habitat in the Pascagoula River Basin inaccessible.

Thanks to all who continue to visit this page.

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