Kints: Boy, and Other Business

"...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, May 4, 2019

Boy, and Other Business

My stepson -- who I will refer to here as "Boy" -- is 15 and is having the kind of troubles in school many of us are familiar with: bullies, girls, fitting in. He also gets the most enjoyment out of electronic games, which were only a brief diversion for me "back in the day" and at whose modern manifestations I am hopelessly inept.

Back in April I took Boy down to the Stronghold, for the long hike on Hollow Man Road. He surprised me with his stamina, and was awed by the great silence of the Swamp, broken only by the voices of birds and of the wind in the trees. We paused about a half mile in, so that I could let him watch some of the Cornell video, and to have a listen to the old audio of the Ivorybill. Nothing like hearing those recorded kent-calls in true Ivorybill habitat. He seemed a bit awed.

Hollow Man was open for a visit.

Hollow Man Lake, where I spied my first swallow-tailed kite of the year as it wheeled above the nearby River.

Last leg of the trail: to Elephant Man Swamp.

Looking north from Elephant Man Swamp. The Lord God Tree is well hidden by foliage now, as he prefers.

End of the trail: Elephant Man Swamp.

Not sure what flowers these are. They were on a large shrub or small tree at the field's edge.

Now I'd like to share with you some words from our friend Dean Hurliman of Iowa. Dean had requested this be shared in a comment on the last post, but they are deserving of a more visible location within the main body.

There will be no Blue Fairy with a transforming wand for the Hurliman IBWs, no Jiminy Cricket to befriend them. And yet...if Brian and Chris were to show me their photos and say:

"Come see the Ivory-Bills we've found

Where the ancient Cypress grow."

I should go with them through the swamp

Hoping it might be so.

Dean S. Hurliman

P.S. Thanks to Thomas Hardy's poem "The Oxen".

I hope to take the 'yak out tomorrow for a visit to mighty Hutson Lake, the grand old oxbow commanding the north end of the Stronghold. Meanwhile, the rains are here today, polishing the new green leaves among which big birds may easily hide from prying eyes.

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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.