Hope with Feathers
By JAMES GORMAN, Contributor to the NYT and Sal's blog.
(I am not the only one giddy about the news...)
Emily Dickinson was right: hope is the thing with feathers. What she didn't know was that it lives in an Arkansas swamp and has a big ivory bill.
On Thursday, the day that scientists announced the first confirmed sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker in 60 years, I went for a short paddle in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, where the bird was seen. And I was trying to adjust to the good news.
Furthermore, as a journalist, I'm not used to good news. There's just not that much of it. So the report that the ivory bill lived took me off guard. I got a bit overexcited and flew down to Little Rock from New York, drove out to Bayou de View in the refuge and got in a canoe.
Audubon called it the "great chieftain of the woodpecker tribe" and others called it the Lord God bird because when people saw it, they said, "Lord God!" But it was gone, one of the natural treasures that a growing country stepped on and broke.
Tim Gallagher, who wrote "The Grail Bird" about the search and the sighting of the ivory bill, said that Bobby Harrison, his partner on the search, wept when he saw the bird fly in front of his canoe. I know of at least one person with no connection to the search who wept on reading the news, and I'm sure he was not alone.
Why was the discovery so powerful?
I think it is the reason for the bird's survival. It wasn't a miracle. It wasn't luck. And it wasn't simply the resilience of nature, although that helped. The reason for the astonishing re-emergence of a mysterious bird is as mundane as can be. It is habitat preservation, achieved by hard, tedious work, like lobbying, legislating and fund-raising.
There was luck involved, of course. But my favorite comment about luck was made by Branch Rickey, who said, "Luck is the residue of design." Chance favors the protected wetland.
It is possible that this is the last ivory bill, that it won't appear again. And we have to trust the judgment and expertise of the scientists involved on the sighting because there is no crystal-clear photograph. Instead, there are detailed observations and an analysis of a blurry bit of videotape.
In most cases, I might hesitate to allow myself to join in the celebration. But I'm going with the experts in this case.
I am giving in to hope. Perhaps there are more ivory bills. I really hope so. The thing with feathers has got me in its grip.
(I am not the only one giddy about the news...)
Emily Dickinson was right: hope is the thing with feathers. What she didn't know was that it lives in an Arkansas swamp and has a big ivory bill.
On Thursday, the day that scientists announced the first confirmed sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker in 60 years, I went for a short paddle in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, where the bird was seen. And I was trying to adjust to the good news.
Furthermore, as a journalist, I'm not used to good news. There's just not that much of it. So the report that the ivory bill lived took me off guard. I got a bit overexcited and flew down to Little Rock from New York, drove out to Bayou de View in the refuge and got in a canoe.
Audubon called it the "great chieftain of the woodpecker tribe" and others called it the Lord God bird because when people saw it, they said, "Lord God!" But it was gone, one of the natural treasures that a growing country stepped on and broke.
Tim Gallagher, who wrote "The Grail Bird" about the search and the sighting of the ivory bill, said that Bobby Harrison, his partner on the search, wept when he saw the bird fly in front of his canoe. I know of at least one person with no connection to the search who wept on reading the news, and I'm sure he was not alone.
Why was the discovery so powerful?
I think it is the reason for the bird's survival. It wasn't a miracle. It wasn't luck. And it wasn't simply the resilience of nature, although that helped. The reason for the astonishing re-emergence of a mysterious bird is as mundane as can be. It is habitat preservation, achieved by hard, tedious work, like lobbying, legislating and fund-raising.
There was luck involved, of course. But my favorite comment about luck was made by Branch Rickey, who said, "Luck is the residue of design." Chance favors the protected wetland.
It is possible that this is the last ivory bill, that it won't appear again. And we have to trust the judgment and expertise of the scientists involved on the sighting because there is no crystal-clear photograph. Instead, there are detailed observations and an analysis of a blurry bit of videotape.
In most cases, I might hesitate to allow myself to join in the celebration. But I'm going with the experts in this case.
I am giving in to hope. Perhaps there are more ivory bills. I really hope so. The thing with feathers has got me in its grip.
posted by SA at 6:57 AM
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