Cornell trio hosted by soon-to-be author Niedrach

While Allen, Kellogg and Tanner were in the Denver area recording birds in 1935, they were hosted by Dr. Robert J. Niedrach.

Niedrach and Robert B. Rockwell coauthored Birds of Denver and Mountain Parks in 1939.

The Denver Museum of Natural History (later changed to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science) employed Niedrach from 1913 until his retirement in 1970. He was a field naturalist who became the museum’s curator of birds. Niedrach was also a collector, taxidermist and preparator. He worked closely with Alfred M. Bailey, the museum's director from 1936 to 1969.

Bailey was a pioneering bird photographer and cinematographer noted for his fieldwork. Bailey and Niedrach worked on several projects together. In 1951, they coauthored Stepping Stones across the Pacific, in 1953, The Red Crossbills of Colorado, in 1965, the two-volume Birds of Colorado and in 1967, they published Pictorial Checklist of Colorado Birds: with brief notes on the status of each species in neighboring states of Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

The limits of science in the 1930s

Author and history professor (Virginia Tech) Mark Barrow writes in his wonderful book Nature's Ghosts:

"The 1920s and 1930s marked a watershed in the evolution of policies and scientific practices related to endangered species in the United States. While naturalists had long shown a keen interest in the plight of vanishing wildlife, for the first time they possessed the training, conceptual tools, techniques, financial backing, and desire to begin more thorough investigations of those species in the field. The three studies chronicled in this chapter [Alfred O. Gross: heath hen, James T. Tanner: ivory-billed woodpecker and Carl Koford: California condor] were born of a optimistic belief that if enough could be learned about the life history, behavior, and ecology of vanishing animals, they might be snatched from the jaws of extinction.”

“In the cases of Tanner and Koford, the single most important proposal was to restrict human access to and modifications of areas known to be prime ivorybill and condor habitat. Yet, given the larger political, social, and economic climate of the time, even those modest recommendations faced stiff resistance from individuals who had prior claims on the landscapes on which these species depended to survive.”

“While Koford and his colleagues overcame much of that resistance, [indeed, the California condor unquestionably still flies today] the National Audubon Society failed to stop logging on the Singer Tract. Clearly, science alone could achieve only so much without a larger change in values.”

- From Nature’s Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology, by Mark V. Barrow, Jr.

Hope is the thing with feathers

As my friend Chris Cokinos so aptly pointed out, quoting the Belle of Amherst, “Hope is the thing with feathers — That perches in the soul — And sings the tune without the words — And never stops — at all.”

Never stops at all. That’s our hope. For if a bird as plentiful as the passenger pigeon and one as leery and lost as an ivory-bill can both go extinct, then there is no hope.

Although I have known Nancy Tanner for over 12 years (we are both members of the local bird club) and knew of her connection to the ivory-billed woodpecker, it was really Chris Cokinos’ book that first set my mental gears in motion.

His Hope Is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds, first published in the year 2000, is a look at several lost avian species: Carolina parakeet, heath hen, great auk, passenger pigeon, Labrador duck and the ivory-billed woodpecker that are extinct or nearly so. (The jury is still out on the ivorybill and may be sequestered for many years to come. Read Scott Weidensaul’s The Ghost with Trembling Wings.)

If have not read “Hope” then please stop reading this and run out and buy a copy. Don’t check it out of the library; authors struggle to make ends meet.

I was lucky to meet Chris a few years ago when he came to Ijams Nature Center to speak.

Many thanks Chris, for your words of support. My book about Jim Tanner is finally finished.

- Photo of Christopher Cokinos and Nancy Tanner taken January 15, 2007 at Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville.