[ad_1]
The ivory-billed woodpecker, for which Woody Woodpecker is not named, has been declared extinct by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Scientists hope news of the bird’s death is premature, but research has been unsuccessful for years in the swamps of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.
In the unlikely event that this happens at a betting bar, Woody, the movie star bird, was drawn by cartoonist Walter Lance in 1940 for Universal Studios. Its creation was based on the great peak.
I would have loved to see an ivory-billed woodpecker. Because I am fascinated by such films, I watched a documentary about a man searching for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker not long ago. His excitement when he was convinced he had seen one right there, right there in the highest branch, was palpable. I believe he was in Mississippi, stomping through brush and wetlands. He and his viewers have never seen one.
As is now routine in all stories having to do with nature, climate change is the practical, even peripheral, culprit for the bird’s disappearance. In fact, in the Associated Press article, climate change was in the third sentence of the article.
Climate change – the climate has always changed – cannot explain the rarity of the Ivory-billed woodpecker more than 100 years ago. It was apparently a national newsletter when, in 1907, Teddy Roosevelt spotted three of the creatures while on a bear hunt in the Louisiana swamps.
The birds were magnificent enough to be sought after by collectors and hatters and were therefore slaughtered and sold. And the clearing of old growth forests in the Southeastern United States had happened long before today’s school children learned of the horrors of the internal combustion engine. Our information gathering institutions could certainly use some context. Stories about newly discovered species don’t get nearly the same attention on the front page.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has offered to remove 23 animals and plants from the endangered species list because none can be found. The ivory-billed woodpecker, clearly the least impacted by what is called climate change, has been honored because it would be difficult to get too excited about the disappearance of the flat mussel.
I have on my desk, with binoculars, a “Birds of the Midwest” guidebook. In the lost year of working from home, I hung two bird feeders outside my office window and learned to identify wren, finches and woodpeckers and blackbirds in long tail and the black-eyed junco. I didn’t need a guide for cardinals and blue jays.
At least six times over the years I have been a bird whisperer. Sometimes they crash into a window and if you reach for them when the little musical notes are playing above their heads, you can gently rock them back and forth in consciousness and go.
I would be sad to see any of these creatures disappear, and I bet not. Birds are more threatened by a stray cat than by another hot day.
[ad_2]