Well written account of another tragic disaster

You’ve authored another wonderful book. I thoroughly enjoyed Ghost Birds—a well written account of another tragic disaster thanks to our lovely myopic species. I have never read Tanner’s notes or journals but as I read your book I wondered if he wrote with such an engaging style.

Thank you for writing this book and I eagerly await your next one.

Sam Moore

(Thank you Sam! And I am currently working on the "next one.")

It made me cry at the end of the Afterward.

Ghost Birds, a review

I did a post recently on this amazing book. I had only begun reading it at that time. At its conclusion I have to tell you, it is a fascinating and enjoyable way to spend your reading time! I learned so much about the Ivory-bill but also about other birds and I was swept away by the discovery aspect of Jim Tanner's quest. 

Each trip into swamps and deep forested areas of Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and elsewhere kept me on edge about the possibilities of finding the ghost birds. I was saddened by the widespread deforestation and the lack of understanding that fashion isn't the driving force in our planet! I was saddened by all the specimens that were collected even by experts.  

But, there was so much more to the story, and I loved every page of this well-written and beautiful account! Overall, it was an uplifting and hopeful rendering of an important education and conservation effort told by a wonderful writer and written about a man with a deep understanding and love of birds and of scientific knowledge. It was about a time in our history just prior to WWII when we were becoming more informed and aware of our natural world. I recommend this book to everyone who loves nature!

I just want to tell you how much the book means to me!  It made me cry at the end of the Afterward.  I felt my heart breaking over the "Trees for Tea" and other aspects of the Ivory-bill's death-knell.  And yet there were those glimmers of beautiful hope.  Sightings that may or may not be really true.  And I do believe with all my heart that we NEED that hope as human beings.  It allows all the negative things we have ever done as a race to the plants and animals that surround us to receive a shadow of possible absolution.  

Your writing is wonderful...I can't tell you that enough.  You did indeed have much more of a story to tell than just things about "a woodpecker."  I came to love Jim Tanner.  I would have been so proud to have been one of his students.  Please tell Nancy how much I respect him as a person and as a scientist, and how much I respect her for the person that she is as well

Marie from Tucson (Click here for her blog)

The ivory-bill remains regally beautiful

Since Jim Tanner last saw a living ivory-bill, over 70 years ago, the bird has remained "regally beautiful" either dead or alive.

Yesterday, in an editorial titled "Science and Truth: We’re All in It Together" for The New York Times, Jack Hitt writes:

"THE greatest bird news of our lifetime occurred at the height of the George W. Bush administration. In April 2005, amid a pageant of flags and cabinet ministers in Washington, John Fitzpatrick, the director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, announced that an ivory-billed woodpecker had been spotted for the first time in more than half a century in an Arkansas swamp. 

President Bush pledged millions for habitat restoration. This and hundreds of other papers heralded the news... 

"The weirdest part of the ivory-bill’s resurrection is that if you look back through the past four decades, it turns out the bird has come back to life many times before. The ivory-bill seems to rise like a phoenix at times of environmental anxiety. And each time the sighting has been debunked, and then afterward some great section of wilderness has been declared protected and everyone feels better for a while.

After a 1966 disputed sighting in Texas, 84,550 acres became the Big Thicket National Preserve. When the ivory-bill was sighted/not sighted in a South Carolina swamp in 1971, the outcome was the creation of Congaree National Park. Alex Sanders, who as a member of South Carolina’s House of Representatives fought to preserve the land, told me that when people ask him where the ivory-bill is, he says, “I don’t know where he is now, but I know where he was when we needed him.”

In short, "the ivory-bill is charismatic megafauna, regally beautiful and a natural mascot for fund-raising." Wherever it appears, habitat gets bought and protected. Perhaps remaining a ghost is the Ghost Bird's greatest legacy.

For the rest of the editorial, go to: Science and Truth. 

Thanks, Gene.

Article highlights Tanner's career post-ivorybill

Bridging the Sciences

Jim Tanner: birdman with a mind for math

Young James T. Tanner arrived at East Tennessee State College (today: University) in September 1940. Nestled in the foothills of the Appalachians with Buffalo and Cherokee mountains to the south, Tanner must have felt at home on the wooded campus, it looked all the world like his homeland: western New York State. The new biology professor had just finished his PhD in ornithology at Cornell University and was ready for a new challenge. 

Dr. Tanner had also just completed a three year, ground-breaking study and follow-up dissertation on the ivory-billed woodpecker, the famed “Ghost Bird” of the Southern swamps. It was the first such detailed field study of a single species on the verge of extinction; and the first research fellowship funded by the National Audubon Society. With it Tanner set the gold-standard for others to follow.

           

Shortly after arriving on the Johnson City campus, Tanner met a new assistant professor at the college, fellow New Yorker and Harvard-educated Nancy Sheedy. The two became inseparable, soon fell in love and were married in August one year later. Except for his four year stint in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Jim and Nancy Tanner lived the rest of their lives together in the Volunteer State. 

            

In January 1947, Tanner joined the faculty of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, becoming an assistant professor of zoology. At UT, Tanner’s fieldwork continued. One significant early study was a comparison of black-capped and Carolina chickadees, two closely related species that coexist in the Southern Appalachians. His findings were published in The Auk in 1952. In 1953, Tanner was promoted to associate professor at the university and full professor in 1963. After a visit to Mexico with his son David, Tanner published a report the following year in The Auk on the decline and status of the imperial woodpecker, native to the Sierra Madre from northern Sonora to northern Michoacán...

For he rest of my article look in the March/April 2012 issue of The Tennessee Conservationist.  

Ghost Birds nominated for Deep South Book Prize

Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1935 - 1941 has been nominated for the Deep South Book Prize presented by the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South at the University of Alabama.

Ghost Birds is available in the gift shop at Ijams Nature Center or online at sites listed on the right.

Two Ghost Birds talks scheduled for next week

I'll be doing two Ghost Birds talks next week about Jim Tanner's search for the ivory-billed woodpecker in the 1930s.

     1) Tuesday, January 10: 7 PM 
          Knoxville Chapter of the Sierra Club

     2) Friday, January 13: 1 PM 
          Wilderness Wildlife Week in Pigeon Forge.

Stop by and say hello.