April 29, 2005
A bit more about that bird
So, why should we care about the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker?
Well, I could say that it's because it was a priceless part of the natural heritage of America, and indeed of the world. Because every extinct species diminishes us a little. Because now my sons will have a chance to see an Ivory-Bill, something I never imagined they could have.
But let's try another reason: because it's SO FREAKING COOL, MAN!!!
Early white settlers gave the Ivory-Bill the nickname of “the Lord God Bird”. Apparently, upon seeing it for the first time — this huge bird, stark black and white with an enormous red plume, golden eyes, and the beak like a power drill — everyone’s first reaction was, “Lord /God/! What the hell is that thing?”
The Ivory-Bill was the world's largest woodpecker. This isn't ditsy little Woody. Try this: bend your arm at the elbow, maybe 45 degrees, while holding your wrist straight. Now extend your index finger at a slight angle, as if pointing. Got it? Now think of a bird as long as your forearm, with a beak like your index finger.
The Ivory-Bill had few predators, because one peck from that beak would see off anything smaller than an eagle. It was loud, fierce and fearless, and with good reason. In the 1890s, one wildlife artist discovered this the hard way, when he netted an Ivory-Bill, took it back to his hotel room, and then tried to put it in a cage so he could paint it at his leisure. The bird smashed the cage to pieces, gave him several deep puncture wounds, and blasted its way out the window in a shower of glass.
(Recent reports have been emphasizing how shy the bird is. If so, this is a learned behavior. 19th century reports of Ivory-Bills don't describe them as shy. Quite the opposite, if anything.)
All woodpeckers are living drills, but the Ivory-Bill was in a class by itself. It was basically a small chainsaw with wings. Even before it was seriously endangered, birders would travel for days to see it in action. You have to imagine this big bird just blasting into a rotten tree, BRRRRAAAAACCCK, chips and sawdust flying everywhere; then pausing to slurp up a grub or two with its six inch long, barbed and spiked tongue; and then BRRRAAAACCCK returning to the attack again, while the hole in the tree got visibly bigger.
It was huge. It was hardcore. It was quintessentially American. If this bird had been around in the '70s, someone would have put it on a heavy metal album cover.
So. Now what?
"Is the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker really, truly extinct" was always one of those questions that could get any three randomly selected bird enthusiasts in a hissing, shrieking, squawking dispute within a minute or two. But the International Ornithological Union said yes, and I was inclined to agree. It's a big damn bird, loud, and conspicuous -- black and white with a brilliant red crown. And while there are some pretty wild places in Louisiana and Arkansas, we're not talking about the jungles of the Congo here. If we could discover the last colony of Bulmer's Fruit Bat in the mountains of Papua New Guinea, you'd think we would have found the Ivory-Bill here in the US after 50 years of looking hard.
But it looks like we missed it. Maybe. I hope.
I'm sure those woods are about to be disturbed by dozens if not hundreds of birders. If it's really there, we should have something better than a blurry video soon.
Cross fingers.
Posted by douglas at April 29, 2005 11:18 PMFront page story in today's _New York Times_. (Link requires registration).
Off-topic observation #1. (but on the theme of Creatures Barely Known to Science)-- I seem to recall stories from time to time about carcasses, or parts thereof, of Really Big Deep Sea Creatures washing up on various shorelines. If I recall how the stories usually go, the RBDSC is usually of a type that has never been seen alive.
Off-topic observation #2. Colecanths are something like 4 or 5 feet long, so I guess it's possible to lose track of big animals for long periods of time.
Off-topic observation #3. A descent (*) of woodpeckers has made its home on my street
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=126+hickory+lane+bryn+mawr&ll=40.029534,-75.339807&spn=0.004860,0.007532&t=k&hl=en
They're remarkably loud.
(*) Really. I looked it up.
(**) Specific species unknown
My first thought was "Hot Damn!" My second thought was "What does Doug think?"
Posted by: Mike Davis at April 30, 2005 12:44 AMWhen I first heard of this I assumed that, of course, everyone had read the captivating story of THE RACE TO SAVE THE LORD GOD* BIRD by Philip Hoose (http://www.nature.org/magazine/fall2004/animals/). Except it seems they haven't. But they should especially since NOW it has a happy ending.
(as in: *Lord GOD, what IS that bird--?!)
Posted by: Carbonel at April 30, 2005 08:17 AMNow that we have a good idea that some of them are out there, is there any way that they could be bred in captivity so that the population gets expanded?
Posted by: Andrew Reeves at April 30, 2005 10:00 PMHey Doug,
I'm going to post this over to Alt.history.future, but I wanted to ask you something: Which extinct birds do we have DNA of? That is, if we ever get good bio-tech, it should be possible to clone them, because we still have some feathers in a mueseum somewhere that we can ground up?
Cheers,
Mike
Alex Ross describes the sound of the ivory bill like this: [it] 'starts off sounding a bit like Giacinto Scelsi and then morphs into pure Louis Armstrong'.
http://www.therestisnoise.com/2005/04/paging_messiaen_1.html
I ma not familiar with the work of Scelsi, but I can definitely hear the Louis Armstrong.
Alex Ross describes the sound of the ivory bill like this: [it] 'starts off sounding a bit like Giacinto Scelsi and then morphs into pure Louis Armstrong'.
On the subject of rare bird's noises:
"I've heard a tape of collected kakapo noises, and it's almost impossible to believe that it all just comes from a bird, or indeed any kind of animal. Pink Floyd studio out-takes perhaps, but not a parrot."
Douglas Adams, _Last Chance to See_
Hi Mike,
It's hard to give a straight answer to that, because it's unclear what the limits of the technology will be. Right now, cloning is just barely possible using fresh, intact cell nuclei. It's still an open question whether cloning from a long-dead corpse is still possible. Cell death tends to damage the nucleus, though it may leave long strands of DNA intact.
Still... I will go out on a limb here and say that if we have a large mass of pretty intact skins and whatnot, we'll probably have a shot at cloning within the next 50 years. It may not be "cloning" per se, but some other technique. Frex, if you gather enough DNA bits of extinct bird X, you might be able to assemble its genome. From that maybe you could build intact DNA strands in a sequence, then splice them into the nucleus of a cell from a closely related extant bird... pure speculation there.
Candidates might include the Carolina Parakeet (oh please) and a few of the Hawaiian birds,because they were colorful and interesting and there are a lot of stuffed ones in collections.
On the other hand, the moas and the dodo are probably gone for good. So are some more recent birds like the Wake Island Rail (extinct in 1944) and the Marianas Mallard (last seen c. 1970), because those were pretty obscure, and there probably aren't enough specimens in decent condition out there. Or so I'd guess.
Doug M.