Kints: Bird Lake: 2 September 2019

"...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, September 20, 2019

Bird Lake: 2 September 2019

I slipped away from the modern world for a few minutes on Labor Day to visit a large, shallow lake just to the north of Mississippi Highway 26. A sign by the lone boat ramp marks the lake as "HWY 26 North Birding Area." I asked a Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks (MDWFP) official, who had later stopped me for a permit check, what the name of the lake is. "Bird Lake," he said. "We only call it 'Bird Lake.'" Fair enough, I guess. I already knew that the lake is definitely a local hotspot for waterfowl in the colder months, having often passed it by on trips to Dace Lake and Davis Eddy.

It looks inviting enough on Google Earth. The land seems to sink into the rough shape of an oxbow along its southern line:

Bird Lake on Google Earth. Big Lake is the slender body of water at the top of the image.

I quickly found navigating by kayak nearly impossible, as the waters open to sunlight near the boat ramp are immediately choked by a vigorous growth of lily pads and submerged timber. I'd hoped to make for the northern and eastern reaches, but the morass steered me east and south instead, to a very nice, shady growth of baldcypress and swamp tupelo nearer the forest road. (An air boat might be of more use here.) I disturbed the breakfasts of numerous wood ducks, which skittered off into the secure north, broadcasting their alarm for the other denizens of the Swamp. I heard more woodpeckers than I saw, although I caught a glimpse of a very large Pileated Woodpecker on a cypress snag along whatever passes for a shoreline to the north, before I passed into the shade of the trees.

Typical view.

Not sure why this photo turned out this way.

Honeybees were everywhere abuzz among the lilypads.

It was nice to see them.

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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.