Nature/Outdoors
Every morning, Michael Collins heads to the Pearl River bayou near his Louisiana home to bird-watch for a couple of hours before work. He gets around the swamp by kayak, hauling cameras, tape recorders, and tree climbing ropes through the swamp, and searches, day after day, for the holy grail of birds – a species that no one is sure even still exists. Every so often – once or twice a year, on average – his perseverance is rewarded: He catches a fleeting glimpse of an ivory-billed woodpecker.
And this is a remarkable thing, as no one is certain that the ivory-billed woodpecker, the so-called "Lord God bird," still lives. It was hunted to the brink of extinction in the 1930s, and for 60 years most ornithologists thought the bird, the largest woodpecker in the United States, and which John James Audubon described as "graceful to the extreme," had fallen off the precipice forever.
Collins has seen the birds more often than any other human being. "I'm not going to dance around the issue. I've seen them. I've had 10 sightings; I've obtained three videos," Collins said...... Continue reading.
And this is a remarkable thing, as no one is certain that the ivory-billed woodpecker, the so-called "Lord God bird," still lives. It was hunted to the brink of extinction in the 1930s, and for 60 years most ornithologists thought the bird, the largest woodpecker in the United States, and which John James Audubon described as "graceful to the extreme," had fallen off the precipice forever.
Collins has seen the birds more often than any other human being. "I'm not going to dance around the issue. I've seen them. I've had 10 sightings; I've obtained three videos," Collins said...... Continue reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment