Book Review: The Grail Bird by Tim Gallagher
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Review by Andy Birch
andyrbirch AT yahoo.com
June 2005
The Grail Bird is a perfect blend of Lewis and Clark pioneering, Indiana Jones action and the satisfaction of an unthinkable dream realised.
This book is riveting and I couldn’t put it down for 3 days as I devoured Tim Gallagher’s adventures. It is made all the more compelling because unlike any book previously, they do actual find a living, breathing Ivory-billed Woodpecker!
I suspect I wasn’t the only one who experienced a stunned reverence when I switched on my computer on the morning of April 28th to see my inbox flooded with messages from both the states and Europe about the re-discovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Further surfing around the web, revealed that this was just the tip of the iceberg. The birding world was abuzz on a scale I had never seen before. The most exciting news of the decade or the past century? Quite possibly, and if it isn’t, it certainly has to win hands down for the sheer media coverage. The 3 men that started this story were Gene Sparling, Bobby Harrison and Tim Gallagher.
It would have been very difficult not to have been aware of this story. I had non-birding friends quizzing me about what was so special about it. I could only liken it to a scientifically proven discovery of Bigfoot. We all wanted to believe this bird was hanging on somewhere in a remote wood or swamp and the brief sightings from non-birdwatchers helped to fuel that speculation. However, I think many of us knew in our heart of hearts that this large, conspicuous bird just could not still exist in the US.
The book started as a project by Tim Gallagher to record the eyewitness accounts of those people who saw the last remaining birds back in the 30s and 40s. We are taken along Tim and Bobby's journey as they revisit some of the old woodpecker haunts awestruck in disbelief at the destruction of the woodpeckers' past breeding habitat. One can only admire their Sherlock Holmes detective work as they interview colorful backwater locals searching for clues as they try to unearth potential habitat where the bird might still be hanging on.
They pull off the impossible after a tip off from a possible sighting posted by a kayaker in an Arkansas swamp. The rest, as they say, is now history. Their discovery leads to an intensive combined conservation effort and research to document the bird.
However, you might want to hold off on taking those kayaking lessons, booking that month off work and pasting the new Sibley Ivory-billed insert in to your field guide. Despite intensive round-the-clock searching for over a year, the bird has been seen only a few times and those views can only be described as poor and fleeting at best. You may have seen the video stills...those are the best that exist. I really hope I am proved wrong but again I have that familiar sinking feeling that we may be just too late and we have stumbled upon the last male Ivory-billed Woodpecker left... |
