The Race to Save the Lord God Bird Read online

  The scientists examined the nest thoroughly, hoping for clues that would tell them why the birds left without rearing young. Inside the hole were tiny fragments of eggshell and a thin, even layer of what looked like sawdust. There was no sign of blood or struggle, no torn feathers or other evidence that a hawk or an owl or a raccoon had slipped into the nest and carried off or eaten the young. They swept the nest contents into a paper bag and took it back to their hotel in Tallulah. The next morning, Doc emptied the contents of the bag onto a desk and turned on a lamp for a closer look. Tanner and Kellogg gathered around. The “sawdust” quickly sprang to life under the hot lightbulb. Soon the desk was seething with tiny mites that stormed up their hands, biting all the way. Yelping, the three men raced for water, scrubbed their arms, and bagged up as many of the tiny creatures as they could. Doc sealed them in an envelope and mailed them off to Cornell so that a mite expert could tell them what species they were.

  There turned out to be nine different species. Some ate only wood, fungi, and algae, but at least three ravenously ate warm-blooded creatures. Allen remembered how nervous the adult Ivory-bills had seemed at the nest, and how much time they had spent preening their feathers. He wondered if the newly hatched birds hadn’t been overwhelmed by this army of mites, or if maybe they hadn’t even been born at all. Maybe the adults had been so busy trying to pick mites out of their feathers that they hadn’t spent enough time incubating the eggs. But then again, the egg fragments probably meant the young had hatched. So what had happened to the chicks?

  The next day, Allen, Kuhn, Tanner, and a visitor from the National Park Service scouted on horseback for another nest. After seven tough miles they heard faint sounds similar to the calls the parents had made when exchanging shifts at the nest back at Camp Ephilus. Kuhn dismounted and tiptoed closer until he spotted a male’s red crest disappearing into a hole nearly fifty feet up in a dead oak hanging over a small clearing. The men tied up their horses and concealed themselves in a thicket of poison ivy and catbrier for two hours, watching the nest and scribbling notes. Around noon they saw the sign they were looking for—the male flew into the nest with a “big borer grub held lengthwise in his bill”—baby food. And sure enough, a few minutes later they heard what Doc described as “a weak buzzing from the young … Apparently they were too small to swallow the grub for [the male] left [and flew] with it to a tree one hundred feet away and apparently swallowed it himself.”

  At last they had what they wanted: a nest with young birds inside to observe. They hustled back to Tallulah, reassembled Ike’s wagon for sound at the jail, and dragged everything back into the swamp, arriving at the new nest before noon on May 14. But once again the forest was still and the Ivory-bills were gone. They waited all afternoon for the birds to return, then gave up and examined the nest. Again there was no sign of blood or struggle. There were no eggs or shells or feathers. This time there weren’t even mites. It was as if the parents had cleaned the nest carefully and checked out.

  Doc Allen kept trying to fit the clues together into a pattern, but every time there were missing pieces. In some ways the birds’ behavior at the two nests was similar to that of birds at a third nest Kuhn told him he had observed two years earlier. These woodpeckers had also seemed to be working hard to incubate eggs and feed young, except that they were extremely nervous and jumpy. Sometimes they changed places twenty times an hour. They finally deserted the nest before their nestlings could fly or feed themselves. Kuhn had peered into the nest, but it had been empty. He didn’t think mites had been there. To Doc, the one link between the three nests was that in each case the adults had managed to hatch their young, but then lost them soon after.

  Allen thought about predators. Ivory-bill nests had big holes, big enough for a Great Horned Owl or a large hawk to enter, but there was never a sign of a fight or a killing. What was going on? He began to wonder if something very serious might be happening here. Was the problem genetic? Maybe there were just too few birds left to produce sturdy stock. Maybe all the years of logging and specimen hunting had finally left so few adults so closely related to one another that the offspring they produced could stay alive for only a few days. It was what happened in many species when first cousins mated. Family groups of Ivory-bills had grown increasingly isolated, and interacted only with each other. There were only a very few mates to choose from. Scientists call this “inbreeding.”

  Doc Allen hoped there was still time to save the species. He felt that extinction was not only a tragedy but a sign of human defeat, and that he had a moral responsibility not to give up on a fellow creature if it could be saved. But he needed to know more. Just as a doctor needs to understand the behavior of a virus or a bacterium in order to prescribe a cure for an infection, he had to know exactly why these birds were dying in order to save them.

  GIVING VOICE TO BIRDS AT LAST

  The Cornell sound expeditionaries—mainly Tanner, Allen, and Kellogg—traveled almost fifteen thousand miles and came home with ten miles of sound film.

  They recorded the voices of nearly one hundred of America’s rarest birds, including this Golden Eagle, and later transferred them to phonograph records that found their way into thousands of homes.

  Besides the only voice recording ever of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, they recorded the honk of the Trumpeter Swan—then almost as rare—the gobbling Lesser Prairie Chicken, screaming hawks, and the eerie wail of the Limpkin. The Cornell pioneers gave more feathered creatures a place in the choir and made ours a more tuneful America.

  The Cornell crew headed west again to record other birds, and then back to Ithaca loaded down with steel canisters of sound film. The most prized segment of all, the part that got shown again and again all over the country, lasts only thirty seconds. It begins with a big Hollywood director—like voice (Kellogg’s) saying, “Ivory-billed Woodpecker; Cornell Catalogue—cut one.” Then the viewer sees Ike’s truck being hauled into the Tensas swamp by four mules moving away from the camera, with Tanner and Albert scrambling behind on foot.

  Then the magic part: suddenly there’s footage of a male Ivory-billed Woodpecker poking his head into and out of a nest, close-up and alive with frantic energy. He gives off a series of loud, hornlike “yaps” and “kents.” The sounds continue as the camera moves to Doc, sitting in the lawn chair at Camp Ephilus, shirt buttoned up against the bugs, looking through the binoculars at the nest as a campfire crackles in the background. Finally the camera swings to Paul Kellogg twisting dials in the sound truck, and then the screen goes black.

  Cornell’s historic film captures the Ivory-bill at its nest

  Three-quarters of a century later, those brief tooting sounds remain the only recordings ever made of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker’s voice, and the film the only record of what the astonishing bird looked like as it moved. The members of the Cornell sound team almost certainly returned from their adventures proud to have made a major contribution to science, and to have documented images and sounds important to American history. But as they settled down to their lectures and classrooms and labs, they must have had trouble keeping their minds from straying to the giant mystery they had left behind at the Singer Refuge.

  Jim Tanner’s 1931 Model A Ford coupe

  CHAPTER NINE

  WANTED: AMERICA’S RAREST BIRD

  Saw old sign[s of woodpeckers], lots of almost impenetrable vines, and no Ivorybills.

  —A common entry in James Tanner’s journal

  Riverbottom Swamps of the Southeastern United States—1937-1939

  JOHN BAKER WAS A MAN WHO KNEW HOW TO GET WHAT HE WANTED. HE HAD NEVER backed down as a fighter pilot in World War I, and afterward, as an investment banker, he had developed a well-earned reputation as a hard negotiator. But this tough man loved birds, so when he was offered the chance to direct the Audubon Society in 1934, he walked away from banking without even a glance back at Wall Street. He immediately recruited an all-star team of young scientists, bird experts, and teachers, i
ncluding Roger Tory Peterson, the remarkable young artist and educator whose new Field Guide to the Birds was creating thousands of new bird-watchers overnight. Baker set out to broaden the Audubon Society’s mission so that it conserved not only birds, but also water, soil, plants, and other wildlife—whole ecosystems. As Baker put it, “Every plant and animal has its role to play in the community of living things. There is no such thing as a harmful species; all are beneficial.”

  When Baker found out that a few Ivory-billed Woodpeckers were by some miracle still alive in Louisiana, he made up his mind to save the species. It was one thing to let a creature slip away without knowing it, but the Cornell films and recordings proved there was still hope. Like Doc Allen, Baker was convinced that the key to the Ivory-bill’s survival was knowing more about it. He quickly raised thousands of dollars for an “Audubon Research Fellowship” that would fund an expert to spend three years studying the Ivory-bill under Doc Allen’s supervision at Cornell. Among other things, this expert would try to locate every Ivory-billed Woodpecker left in the United States. After carefully studying the bird’s biology, health, and history, the expert would write an action plan for saving the species—like a doctor writing a prescription for a feathered patient. It would be the most detailed conservation plan ever attempted in the United States for a single bird species.

  At Cornell, once again Doc knew exactly who he wanted. But this time Jim Tanner’s commitment to the Ivory-bill would have to go much deeper. Always on the move, he would have to track the bird through wild haunts like a sheriff pursuing a fugitive. For years he would have no permanent address.

  Doc explained the hardships to Tanner. A normal life with friends and family would be impossible. He would usually be beyond the reach of telephone or telegram, and he would have to solve his own problems. Three years was a long time. It could get lonely.

  But to Jim Tanner, all this weighed less than a feather compared to the rewards of such a chance. He could learn so much of what he hungered to understand. He could contribute to the science of ornithology. His work would count toward a doctoral degree, and then maybe help him establish a teaching career. Best of all, maybe he could help save a magnificent bird that he had grown to love. He was twenty-three and unmarried, and he even had a car: a 1931 Model A Ford coupe that was as tough as a small truck. Tanner didn’t even hesitate: Doc had his expert.

  At Cornell, Doc and Tanner carefully developed the goals of the investigation:

  1. Tanner would try to find out where Ivory-bills had lived historically—all the places they had ever been found. That meant a huge amount of reading, writing to experts, visiting libraries and museums, talking to old-timers with long memories, and listing and mapping every report ever written down by anyone who had collected an Ivory-bill specimen.

  2. He would also try to discover where Ivory-bills lived now. He would visit every major swamp and cypress forest from North Carolina to Texas if he had to. He would interview hunters and foresters, game wardens and bird-watchers, and try to find every Ivory-bill still alive. He would make a list and a map showing where they were. By comparing the current map to the historical map, he could show how much of their habitat had been lost and what their favorite types of forest had been.

  3. He would study the ecology of the species—the relationship between the Ivory-bill and its environment. What did it eat? How did it find its food? Did anything eat it? Mites? Mosquitoes? Owls? If it couldn’t find its favorite food, what else would it eat, if anything? Did it need certain kinds of trees for food and shelter?

  ECOLOGY

  In the 1930s and 1940s, ornithologists became more and more interested in ecology—studying a bird’s whole natural environment and how it interacted with everything around it—not just in the biology of an individual species. James Tanner was an ideal candidate to study the Ivory-bill because his interests were very broad; he knew that in order to learn how to save the Ivory-bill, he had to know how the whole forest worked.

  Those who study natural ecosystems learn that humans simplify and nature complicates. For example, a tree plantation has fewer species of plants and animals living in it than the forest it replaced. The original forest had more ecological “niches”—the small environments in which species evolve ways to find food, protect their young, and stay safe from predators. A big, ragged forest ecosystem like the Singer forest had thousands of niches, many more than the farms and settlements in the surrounding cleared areas.

  4. He would investigate the bird’s reproductive and nesting habits. What kinds of trees will an Ivory-bill nest in? How high off the ground are the nests? How many eggs does it lay? If one clutch of eggs fails, will it produce another in the same year? If so, how many times? How much food does a nesting family need, and how much space is needed to provide it? Do both parents always incubate eggs and feed young? And, of course, he would try to answer the question that so plagued Doc—why were the nests failing to produce surviving young at the Singer Tract?

  5. Finally, Tanner would create a plan to protect the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. This would be a detailed blueprint that conservationists could use.

  Tanner prepared carefully for his new life. He bought dozens of one-cent postcards to send to Doc, Baker, and his friends and family while he was on the road. He figured out how to unbolt the front seat from his car, lift it out, and turn it into a bed that could be laid on the ground. That would save time and money, and would let him sleep in the woods if he needed to. He packed maps, tools, books, binoculars, boots, a first-aid kit, clothing, and camping gear. He made address lists of Doc’s contacts and carefully tucked away the letter of introduction Doc wrote for him to show to strangers. It read:

  To whom it may concern: You will find Mr. Tanner extremely reliable and trustworthy, and if you prefer that your information should get no further than him, I know that he can keep a secret when it concerns the welfare of the Ivory-bill.—Arthur A. Allen

  Tanner found drawings of a Pileated and an Ivory-billed Woodpecker shown side by side. A printer shrank the page to pocket size and ran off dozens of copies for him. These cards would be valuable, since the two species were so often confused. They would also give him something to leave with the many people he would interview—it was half business card, half wanted poster.

  IVORY-BILL ALIASES

  James Tanner made this list of the names that the Ivory-bill was called in scientific literature or by people he met:

  Pearly Bill

  Pearl Bill

  Log-god

  Log-cock

  Woodcock

  King Woodchuck

  King of the Woodpeckers

  Indian Hen

  Southern Giant Woodpecker

  Pate or Pait

  Ivory-billed Caip

  Tit-ka (Seminole name)

  Grand Pic Noir a bec blanc

  Poule de bois [in southern Louisiana]

  Grand pique-bois [in southern Louisiana]

  Habenspecht

  Elfenbeinschnabel-Specht

  Kent [northern Louisiana]

  He celebrated the holidays with his parents in Cortland and on January 4, 1937, took off in his roadster, passing through the low hills he had hiked as a boy, over the Catskills, down to New York City, and on toward the South. His car had no radio and he wasn’t much of a singer; his dreams were his entertainment. He was off to do what no one had ever done, and it happened to be the thing he wanted to do most. He would do his best to find all remaining Ivory-bills, to understand them, and to help them. As he motored toward the great southern river swamps, he could have titled his journey “Wanted: America’s Rarest Bird.”

  THE ADAPTABLE RESEARCHER

  On January 20, 1937, Jim Tanner followed a hand-sketched map to a dirt road which led to a landing along the Altamaha River in southern Georgia. The Ford pitched to a stop around noon. Tanner got out and stretched. The day was fine and warm. An old-timer was fishing from a crude wooden rowboat just offshore, and they fell into pleasant conv
ersation. A few minutes and four dollars later, the boat was Jim Tanner’s. Tanner piled in the gear he needed, pulled the car off the road, and shoved off downstream.

  He had come to the Altamaha River to check out an Ivory-bill record that was now eleven years old. Somewhere in his research he had seen a report that in 1926 a man named Verster Brown Sr. had spotted an Ivory-bill in a swamp on the river near Baxley, Georgia. The details of his sighting were good enough to make it seem worth exploring. Tanner stayed on the river for the next five days, paddling fifty miles in all. Often he would raise the oars out of the water and cock his ear for the Ivory-bill’s cry. He never heard it. Most of the trees along the river had been recently cut, and there wasn’t much wildlife of any kind to be seen or heard. Local people had little useful information. Finally he dragged the boat up to the shore and hitchhiked back to his car. “It did not produce results,” he wrote in his journal, “but it was a grand trip on a pretty river.”

  He drove south to Florida, the state with more records of Ivory-bill sightings than any other. Pulling the drawing of two woodpeckers from his shirt pocket, he introduced himself to dozens of loggers, hunters, trappers, poachers, and wildlife managers. They gave him still more names of old-timers who knew the land. He dutifully looked most of them up. But everywhere the story was the same—yes, Ivory-bills, or Log-cocks, or Lord God birds, had been here, but not for a while. The rumors were thick as mosquitoes, and like mosquitoes, rumors seemed to breed more rumors.

  Drawings by James Tanner