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Posted 09.15.05 Grail Bird (Orion) By Apurva Narechania The Grail Bird Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker By Tim Gallagher Houghton Mifflin, 2005. $25, 288 pages. Birding is a study in glimpses. One of the first things I noticed on reading Grail Bird, Tim Gallagher's nearly chronological recount of ivory-billed fanaticism, is that almost every alleged sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker has been fleeting, a mere impression of the bird's fabled magnificence. In the field, birders refer to this sort of glancing contact as gizz, a term co-opted from World War II plane spotters who attempted to determine the allegiance of distant aircraft. For seekers of the ivory-billed, gizz was never enough. The bird is too important to be trifled with, and its mythological status deserves more than an impressionistic glimpse. The problem is that too often an impression may be filled out with fantasy. One reward of the Grail Bird is its sketches of charismatic characters for whom birding is a way of life. Gallagher himself is one of those characters, but he is self-effacing enough to let the others shine through. David Luneau and Gene Sparling forsake the civilized life almost entirely, trading it in for weeks in knee-deep sludge and the eerie solitude of the swamp. Birders of this caliber and dedication take ownership of their sightings, of their gizz. With Gallagher's and other birder's credible ivory-billed sightings in the Big Woods of Arkansas, gizz has given way to reality. The ivory-billed woodpecker has resurfaced after nearly fifty years of presumed extinction. In its half-century absence, the ivory-billed came to symbolize human destructiveness. Its re-emergence has turned that symbol completely around. People are now talking about the ivory-billed as the touchstone of successful conservation efforts. However, one of the most telling parts of the book is the epilogue where Gallagher admits that nearly all birders close to the ivory-billed have greeted its return with a "certain amount of dread." The announcement that the ivory-billed lives will inspire a flood of amateurs to have a go at the swamp, a place many of the old grail seekers consider a kind of home. Now that the world knows, the swamp, and the occasional ivory-billed swooping around within it, is a little less theirs. Tim Gallagher would probably acknowledge that his sighting was accidental, but he would also say that habitat restoration has set us up for this chance encounter. More than anything else, the ivory-billed sightings are proof that habitat restoration works. Gallagher's hope is that the discovery of the bird will stimulate a kind of positive feedback loop-now that we know the bird is out there, even more habitat will be preserved. This article originally appeared in the Sept/Oct 2005 issue of Orion. |
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