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Authors: Phillip Hoose

BOOK: The Race to Save the Lord God Bird
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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
J
OHN 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, including 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 conversation. 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
IVORY-BILLS VERSUS PILEATEDS
Tanner believed that most people who told him about Ivory-bills were really reporting the much more common Pileated Woodpecker. Both birds are very big and both have black-and-white coloring. Males of both species have red crests, adding to the confusion.
Tanner wrote, “The position of the white on the wing is by far the most reliable field character at all times,” he wrote. “In the Ivory-bill the white is on the rear half of the wing and is visible on the back when the bird is perched and its wings folded. In the Pileated the white is on the front half of the wing and is hidden when the wings are folded.”
Early in February, Tanner reached the Everglades. Sunburned game wardens with leathery faces squinted at him, stroked their chins, and said yes, they thought perhaps they had seen the birds among the cypress trees maybe fifteen or
twenty years ago. One guide, Dewey Brown, said he had heard Ivory-bills calling recently from Big Cypress Swamp. He was happy to show Tanner the spot, but said it would take a few days to get there. By now, Tanner was learning to size up exactly how much of his time any particular rumor was worth. This one was promising, but not that promising. “I told him I would return next year with more time for a decent trip,” Tanner noted.
Tanner's final Florida destination was the Suwannee River, a spot famous for Ivory-bills. William Brewster and Frank Chapman had floated down this river in 1890, killing one Ivory-bill and hearing another. Two years later, Arthur Wayne and his “crackers” had shot Ivory-bills for Brewster and others. Now, more than forty years later, a few of the men who had collected for Wayne were still alive. They were wrinkled old woodsmen with long memories. As Tanner later wrote, they said that “after Wayne's work there Ivory-bills were very unusual and that he had secured almost all of them.” Looking around at the grand trees lining the banks, Tanner hoped it wasn't true. He thought the Suwannee still looked good enough to investigate.
Tanner's map showed a landing, a few miles downstream from Old Town, where the road went down to the riverbank. Maybe he could find another boat or canoe there. For the next hour, Tanner guided the Ford on a jolting, head-bumping ride along two beaten ruts that finally ended at a deserted clearing by the river's edge.
Tanner got out as the dust settled around him. With darkness fast approaching, he walked into the trees and loaded his arms full of twigs and limbs, then stacked them into a tidy pyramid and lit a fire. Minutes later he was contentedly crouched over his supper when he heard a truck rattling down the road. It came to a stop, and several men spilled out. Waving a hasty greeting, they hurried off to gather firewood. After a while Tanner heard bootsteps approaching his fire. Three faces appeared out of the dark, lit by the blaze. The men squatted on their heels and introduced themselves. They said they were there for some night fishing.
Many men in Tanner's situation would have been frightened out of their wits. He was unarmed and surrounded by strangers in the middle of nowhere. Maybe they were after his car. Maybe his money. But Jim Tanner was, as Doc Allen liked to put it, “adaptable.” He could fit in anywhere.
“What are you doing here?” one of the men began. Stirring his fire, Tanner answered,
“I am looking for peckerwoods.” The men were silent. He then launched into his well-rehearsed speech about how there were two kinds of big woodpeckers in these parts, one common and the other rare, and that he was trying to find the rare one. As he was speaking, Tanner could see their eyes narrowing with suspicion. Tanner rambled on until one of the men suddenly burst out laughing. The others soon followed.
When he could finally speak, the first man said, “By golly, I thought for a minute you really were hunting for a peckerwood!” Catching his breath, he explained to Tanner that in those parts “peckerwood” could mean either a bird or a woodsman. Years before, another stranger had come down to the river looking for the human kind. With revenge in his eyes, he was after someone who had crossed him and had escaped on the river. The men had assumed Tanner was after the same fugitive until they realized he actually was looking for a bird.
The strangers tromped off into the blackness to set out their fishing lines, and then banked their own fire to a roaring blaze against the cool night. They yelled over for Tanner to join their party, and he did. “We had a big meal of fried fish, baked yams, and biscuits. I ate my share even though I had already had one supper. Then they loaded their truck and near midnight disappeared up the narrow road.” It was one of many days and nights that didn't turn out the way Tanner planned, but it showed that just about anything could, and would, happen on an expedition like this.

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