FreeLists / bristol-birds / [Bristol-Birds] NY Times Op-ed on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker

["Jerry Thornhill" <jthill@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a very thoughtful piece that a friend shared with me.

Jerry

May 3, 2005
The Woodpecker in All of Us
By JONATHAN ROSEN  OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

I have a hard time imagining many people actually calling the =
ivory-billed
woodpecker the =93Lord God bird=94 - the name doesn=92t even make it =
onto the list
of more than 20 common names recorded by the bird=92s intrepid =
chronicler,
James T. Tanner, in 1942.  But it makes a terrific headline for a bird
reported last week to have been rediscovered after 61 years of official
extinction (better than, say, =93King woodchuck,=94 one of its other =
nicknames).
It somehow suggests that we have found more than just a missing bird and
that God, whom we invoked when we conquered the wilderness, is also =
present
in our effort to get it back.


=93Second chances to save wildlife once thought to be extinct are =
rare,=94 said
Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton.  Of course, chances to save birds =
not
yet believed extinct are common, if sadly less appealing.  But who =
doesn=92t
love the idea of a second act, especially in America, where we  are far =
more
fixated on resurrection and new beginnings than on death and dying?


The searchers have given us back a magnificent creature. Some 20 inches
long, boldly patterned with black and white, the bird is so beautiful =
that
Audubon likened it to a Van Dyck painting. I may never see it - though I
certainly hope to - but it has new life for me and will live for other   =
 =20
 people who may never have even heard of the bird. They will want to =
protect
its habitat and in doing so will, without even knowing it, protect the
habitat of many other animals as well. All this is a great gift.  =
Likening
the bird, as Audubon did, to a work of art while it still haunted the
forests of the South is charming; imagining that the bird is nothing but =
a
work of art is overwhelmingly depressing. As Goethe said, art is long =
and
life is short.   =20

The discovery certainly brings with it a measure of hope - for the bird, =
of
course, but also for us. Though it is unclear if a breeding pair exists, =
we
have suddenly been acquitted of murder, even if we still face a lesser
charge of reckless endangerment for having logged the old-growth trees =
right
out from under the bird. Before last week, the last official sighting of =
an
ivory bill came in 1944 in an area near the Tensas River in Louisiana =
known
as the Singer Tract because it was owned by the Singer Sewing Machine
Company. Despite protests from conservationists warning of the bird=92s
extinction, the Singer Company leased the land to a logging company in =
1938.
At times using German P.O.W.=92s for labor, the company went on to raze =
the
forest.

All birds live between worlds, but the ivory-billed woodpecker is like
Persephone in Greek mythology, the goddess who spent half her time in =
the
underworld and half on earth. This is not even the first time the bird =
has
come back from the grave. Never abundant, the ivory bill was considered =
gone
for good as far back as the 1920=92s, when a nesting pair was found in =
Florida
in 1924. That pair was shot and stuffed by hunters. In 1932 an ivory =
bill
was shot in the Singer Tract, which led to the discovery of a tiny
population that survived until 1944. The bird=92s disappearances gave it =
a
ghostly life that it now carries with it back into the world.

To a bird watcher, every bird has a kind of double existence. It is the =
bird
you struggle to see and identify and gather into the scientific world of
Linnaean nomenclature; and it is the wild, mysterious creature that =
lives
beyond our ability to ever name or truly know it. The trick with  =
birding is
to see both things at once - the bird in the guidebook and the  bird =
that
lives beyond books. To see the Van Dyck painting as a bird that is also, =
as
its lowly Latin name Campephilus principalis tells us, =93principally, =
an
eater of grubs.=94
   =20
The ivory bill has a third identity as well, one that grows out of our =
need
for the natural world to play a symbolic role in our lives. Tanner, in =
his
study, observed that the most common explanation given for the bird=92s
disappearance was that it =93could not stand the presence of mankind or
association with advancing civilization.=94  In other words it was a lot =
like
us as we sometimes idealized ourselves. Huckleberry Finn lights out for =
new
territory because the Widow Douglas wants to adopt and =93sivilize=94 =
him. The
paradox is that the thing that seemed to link us to the wild world, our
ferocious independence and unrestrained freedom, was the very impulse =
that
endangered the wild places nourishing our national soul.

The great 18th-century ornithologist, Alexander Wilson, tells a story =
about
shooting, but not killing, an ivory bill in order to paint it.  Wilson
locked it in his hotel room and when he returned an hour later the  bird =
had
all but hammered its way to freedom. Wilson was so impressed with  the =
bird,
which also attacked him, that he was =93tempted to restore him to his =
native
woods.=94  He resisted temptation, however, and the bird died after =
three days
of refusing food.=20

This defiant, almost suicidal integrity has long been part of the =
bird=92s
aura, but it has been accompanied by an almost opposite quality - a =
claim
the bird makes on us, a refusal to disappear from our lives, almost a =
kind
of haunting. One of the most stirring photographs in Tanner=92s landmark =
1942
study is a picture of an ivory-billed nestling perched on a =
researcher=92s
head.

The ivory bill is a perfect emblem of our own paradoxical relationship =
to
the American wilderness, of what is lost and what can be recovered, and =
of
our own divided impulses. While carrying the ivory bill to his hotel =
room,
Wilson noted the wounded creature=92s cries, =93exactly resembling the =
violent
crying of a young child.=94  And with the bird hidden beneath his coat,
Wilson asked the innkeeper for a room =93for myself and my baby.=94 His =
joke has
painful meaning. Wilson shot a bird he longed to liberate and pretended =
a
wild animal he was in the process of killing was his own child.

The urge to kill and the urge to conserve do live side by side; they are =
our
heritage and the bird somehow carries our double burden on its back.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that David Luneau, whose
videotape of the bird clinched the spectacular rediscovery, attributed =
the
ivory bill=92s survival to =93the lands that hunters and fishermen have
conserved.=94  It=92s worth recalling, too, that it was a young zoology =
major,
David Kulivan, who touched off a frenzy among birders back in 1999 when =
he
said he had seen a pair of ivory bills in a Louisiana swamp while he was =
out
hunting for turkey.

Among its gifts to us, the ivory bill can help us see ourselves as we =
really
are, torn between our own desire to be free - to shoot and develop and =
cut
down and expand - and the desire to live among free things that can =
survive
only if we are less free.  With the double vision of birders, we still =
can
recognize ourselves as the wild children of American fantasy, but also =
as
the far less romantic, but equally biblical, stewards of the earth. The
challenge now is to give the ivory-billed woodpecker a home - not merely =
in
legend but on actual, American ground, where it can be both  the
metaphorical Lord God bird and also the literal eater of grubs. If we =
can
pull this off, we will not merely be saving this bird, we will be saving
ourselves.

Jonathan Rosen, the editorial director of Nextbook, is the author, most
recently, of the novel Joy Comes in the Morning.

Copyright 2005=A0The New York Times Company


*************************************************
       BRISTOL BIRDS NET LIST
Bristol Birds Net Photo Gallery located at:
http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/jwcoffeyy/album?.dir=/efd5

This is a regional birding list sponsored by the
Bristol Bird Club to facilitate communications 
between birders and bird clubs of Southwest Virginia
and Northeast Tennessee.  
--------------------------------------------------
You are subscribed to Bristol-Birds.
To post to this mailing list, simply send an email
to: bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe, send
an email to bristol-birds-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with
the one word 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field.
--------------------------------------------------
       Wallace Coffey, Moderator
         wallace@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
           (423)764-****