Wednesday, October 18, 2006

"A bird that lives no more"

An excerpt from this 1997 article by Laura Erickson (the bold font is mine):
My most vivid impression of Peterson runs to a warmer clime. One of the journeys that earned him the distinguished Explorer Medal from the Explorer's Club was into deep, mosquito-infested, primeval forests of Louisiana where, in 1941, he beheld an ivory-billed woodpecker, one of the last of its kind, a bird not included in his first field guide because it was already feared extinct. How his eyes must have savored the boldly-patterned plumage! How his sensitive eardrums must have vibrated to its call, which he described as "a single loud tooting note constantly uttered as the bird forages about." His brain waves and heart beat must have thrilled at the encounter.

We will never know the moment, the date, or even the decade in which the last ivory-billed woodpecker died. It has been officially declared extinct, yet for many years continued to live in the senses and memory of Roger Tory Peterson. With his passing, we have lost one of the last human links to this magnificent creature. Soon everyone on earth who has ever seen or heard a living ivory-billed woodpecker will be gone, rendering it not only extinct but forever lost to human experience. Peterson shared his magical experience with all of us in the form of his field guide painting, forever imbued with the living spirit of a bird that lives no more.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some thoughts on Tom's post that Ivory Bill sightings go in cycles and therefore might happen again.

There once was a bird that lived no more
Which managed to cause quite an uproar
Its blurry striptease
With two real boobies
Bobby and Tim… does it need an encore?

Anonymous said...

"With two real boobies"

Make that two gigantic clueless boobies.

Anonymous said...

"With two real boobies"

Hey, what's with the Sula-cious comments? Someone needs to support Bobby and Tim in their old age, if you know what I mean.

Anonymous said...

Well, Auburn and Cornell HAVE recordings of the continuous "tooting," don't they? Don't they?

Guess not.

I think it was the mean-spirited skepticism of the likes of Laura Erickson that doomed this bird to extinction. Except it isn't extinct. Is it?

It is?

Surely, if skepticsm could kill it, then Faith has Resurrected it! It has, hasn't it?

It hasn't?