Lost Species Found

Our house is in the middle of a massive rearrangement. Remember that refining a while back, well we are pretty much refining the whole damn place. But the work comes to a complete stop sometimes depending on my mood and what is found. I completely read the diary I tried to keep one year in Junior High School, I refolded an unruly stack of maps, and I found the lost Louisiana Beauty, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. Well,, at least the only pictures I have of it.

Moving my books around I came upon my 1932 The Book of Birds. Buried deep in volume II is the story of the expedition to record the voice and capture the first pictures of that elusive and soon to be extinct, red crested, yellow eyed and sharply demarcated black and white woodpecker. It tells of mules hauling carts miles through the swamp, setting up the best listening equipment, optics and cameras of the day, and sleeping on a pile of palmetto leaves in the swamp. Sounds like it was a rousing good adventure: wish I was there. Anyone got a time machine and want to go back to that swamp with me? I can't think of a better reason to slap mosquitoes for a few weeks.

I didn't miss noticing that in 1932 the Pileated, now North America's largest living woodpecker, was notably taking second place. I saved the captions because the whole book is written this well, and it seemed a shame to crop them.