In 1963, Paul Hahn published a report titled “Where is that Vanished Bird?” He had located 413 ivory-bill skins and mounts and five skeletons in worldwide museums.
Some of these specimens are at the Smithsonian in Washington. In May 2005, I visited the Museum of Natural History: Division of Birds with Paul James, executive director of Ijams Nature Center.
Collections Manager James Dean led us down into the basement archives to where seventeen dead ivory-billed woodpeckers were neatly arranged in two groups: nine males and eight females, all lined up like ears of corn in separate wooden trays. Each had a paper label attached to a leg with a handwritten notation of when and where it had been collected, most seemed to date from the late 1800s. Families that were dispersing “grandfather’s” collection donated many of the specimens to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
Between the Civil War and the conservation movement of the early 1900s, there was an all out frenzy of bird and egg collecting by people other than at the museums and universities. Before stamp and coin collecting became popular pastimes, as one century gave way to another, it seemed that everyone wanted something precious and feathered to hold onto. Paul and I stared in utter disbelief at the seventeen lifeless ivory-bills lying before us. We were speechless, too lost in our own thoughts to soil the moment with mere words.
Author with male ivory-bill specimen.
Paul James, executive director at Ijams Nature Center, with a specimen of a imperial woodpecker.
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Collections Manager James Dean led us down into the basement archives to where seventeen dead ivory-billed woodpeckers were neatly arranged in two groups: nine males and eight females, all lined up like ears of corn in separate wooden trays. Each had a paper label attached to a leg with a handwritten notation of when and where it had been collected, most seemed to date from the late 1800s. Families that were dispersing “grandfather’s” collection donated many of the specimens to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
Between the Civil War and the conservation movement of the early 1900s, there was an all out frenzy of bird and egg collecting by people other than at the museums and universities. Before stamp and coin collecting became popular pastimes, as one century gave way to another, it seemed that everyone wanted something precious and feathered to hold onto. Paul and I stared in utter disbelief at the seventeen lifeless ivory-bills lying before us. We were speechless, too lost in our own thoughts to soil the moment with mere words.
Author with male ivory-bill specimen.
Paul James, executive director at Ijams Nature Center, with a specimen of a imperial woodpecker.
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