Customer Reviews

In Search of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a good read for anyone who's interested in the ivory-billed woodpecker. Although it does not have any information about the rediscovery of the bird in Arkansas, Dr. Jackson has spent his entire adult life studying this bird and has some interesting insights. I also just finished reading "The Grail Bird," a brand new book by Tim Gallagher--one of the people who found the bird. It's like a combination detective story and adventure, and is also very funny in parts. I couldn't put it down. Another great book that has a section on the ivory-bill is "Hope is the Thing with Feathers," by Christopher Cokinos, a first-rate writer. If you're truly interested in learning more about this species, I highly recommend reading all three books.

Jerome Jackson's lifetime of study of, and search for, Ivory-billed Woodpeckers has been distilled into this fine volume. He believes (and certainly hopes!) that a few Ivorybills have managed to survive, unlikely as that seems. In this book, he gives a detailed picture of what we know of Ivorybill biology, as well as an idea of the many questions that persist. He also describes very well the decline of Ivorybills, which he attributes largely to habitat loss.
Early ornithologists who saw, collected, painted, and photographed the birds are given life in these pages. Finally, Jackson describes his own careful searches for the bird, both in the southern US, as well as in Cuba: he just may have encountered Ivorybills, but the fleeting encounters are frustrating.
I certainly recommend this book to those interested in birds, or endangered and extinct species, and wildlife in general.

Just to make a correction to the review written below. The author of this tale is Jackson, not Tanner. Tanner did indeed see and record the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker.

I wanted to love this book, and before reading it I assumed that I would. I didn't quite, though. The "problem" with author Jackson's search -- and a rigorous search it's been -- is that he never actually found anything. And I don't just mean that he didn't find an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker (if he had, you'd already have heard about it). What I mean is that Jackson apparently didn't find anything: no Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, no real hope of finding an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, no spiritual understanding of the bird or its possible (likely?) extinction . . . That's not a criticism, really. Not many of us are capable of spiritual understanding, and even fewer of us are capable of conveying such things to others. But without any of this, I found the book just a bit . . . well, a bit thin. A big chunk of the book is filled with accounts of 19th-century naturalists who studied and "collected" Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers, and I found myself skipping over some of this material. It's useful, I know, but it's not a narrative that pulls you along. I hate it when people tell an author which book he should have written, so I'm not going to do that here. Rather, I'll just say that if you're truly interested in the Ivory-Billed then you'll probably enjoy this book, as I did.

I began reading this book with trepidation. The story of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker has had some exciting news over the last few years tempered with some disappointment of no definiative proof or nest site found. After the long quiet period with lack of new sightings in Arkansas there was some excitement about the Choctawatchee River area in northwestern Florida. This has been written about in Geoffrey Hill's excellent book, "Ivorybill Hunters: The Search for Proof in a Flooded Wilderness".

My version of "In Search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker" by Jerome Jackson is the updated title with the mention on the cover "Updated after the Controversial Rediscovery!". Jackson was a member of the group that published the rebuttal to the Science article about the Arkansas proof of rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

The book is quite interesting and if you like this subject matter you will not be disappointed. I found most of the book hard to put down other than some of the repetitous recounts of old records and the chapter about Ivory-billed Woodpecker trinkets, plates, and references in general literature. I am sure there are people that would be more interested in the historical impact of this bird, I was more interested in it's biology and the opinions of Dr. Jackson on its likelyhood of still existing somewhere in the southeast or Cuba. He did review this in satisfying detail but did not include any comment regarding the new sightings and observations in the Choctawatchee River area.

I can highly recommend this book, Dr. Jackson does give us hope that the birds may still be out there. He has perhaps the most knowledge about this species of anyone in the world and he has shared his knowledge and opinions here in a way that everyone can enjoy and understand.

Jerome Jackson is the world's foremost living expert on the ivory-billed woodpecker, and he has chronicled his own search for the bird, his understanding of the species, and its place in the cultures of North America for the past three centuries in "In Search of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker". This book was published in 2004, around the time of the alleged sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker by Tim Gallagher and Bobby Harrison in an Arkansas swamp, so Jackson does not comment on that incident here. Jackson is a skeptic of that sighting and has expressed his opinion in the documentary Ghost Bird. Jackson does, however, include a more comprehensive list of reported possible sighting of ivory bills, with analysis, than I have seen in other books.

"In Search of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker" is organized into two parts, the first about the bird and the second about the search for it, primarily during the 20th century. Jackson provides a detailed description of the ivory-bill's social behavior, flight, vocalizations, feeding, nesting, fledglings, etc., based on the accounts of observers over the past three centuries, trying to sort out some of the contradictory information. He also offers a complex analysis of the reasons for the bird's demise, focusing on habitat loss and hunting. An entire chapter is dedicated to the significance of the ivory-billed woodpecker to American Indians, who apparently prized the beaks greatly for nearly 1000 years. No wonder there were so few birds left.

The second part of the book examines observations of the ivory-bill from 18th century writings, including those of Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon, before moving on to Arthur Allen and James Tanner in the 20th century. Jackson stands out among other authors as a meticulous, obsessed scholar who leaves no stone unturned, and that is this book's strength. Jackson is a good writer, but most of the book is not narrative, so, if that's what you're looking for, you may want to look elsewhere. On the other hand, if it is information about the ivory-bill you seek, this is the book for you. It contains the most detailed history of the Singer Tract I've read, the most complex analysis of the reasons for the bird's demise, and the most possible sightings.

Jackson, himself, may or may not have caught a glimpse of an ivory-bill in Mississippi in 1973 or heard an ivory-bill in the same state in 1987. But he definitely saw some Cuban ivory-bills in 1988, and he gives us an account of his trip, as well as some other notable treks he made in search of the ivory-bill across 9 states in the 1980s. Jackson is famous for his collection of ivory-bill memorabilia as well, so he can speak about the place of the ivory bill in modern American culture. For a state-by-state record of reported sightings and specimen collections, see Appendix 1. I've read three other books about the ivory-billed woodpecker, and Jerome Jackson's is the best. I've not yet read Nancy Tanner and Stephen Lyn Bale's book, so I can't compare it with that one.

Jerome A. Jackson's Book "In Search of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker" shows the author's his great love of birds, the Ivory-Billed in particular. His enthusiansm and knowledge shine through, making this book a joy to read. A bit like a mystery story, I was captivated by his search and those that went before him. I was also left with the hope, that just perhaps there remain a few left in the wild to proliferate in the habitat that remains.

I really wanted to like this book. I'm actually very interested in the ivory-billed woodpecker, but this was incredibly boring--dry, technical, lifeless. The author actually has the scientific name for every plant and animal all through the text. I just wanted to read an interesting story about a search for this amazing bird. This was not it.