The Grail Bird

by Gallagher, Tim

• ISBN13: 9780618709410
• ISBN10: 061870941X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-04-18
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

In April 2005, a startling announcement made national and international news: the ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird thought to be extinct for nearly sixty years, had been sighted. The story behind this incredible discovery began more than a year earlier when, after a lengthy search, Tim Gallagher was one of the first people to see this iconic bird, the holy grail of birdwatchers. He convinced the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology to mount a massive search for evidence of the bird's existence. The news was kept secret while field teams went to work and land was bought up to be conserved. Gallagher's story reads like a mystery novel, and the subsequent conservation efforts provide hope and a lesson for our times.

Author Biography

As Tim Gallagher was working on his book The Grail Bird, he was among the first to sight the long-thought-extinct ivory-billed woodpecker in Arkansas, which led to a multi-million-dollar effort to confirm the sighting and protect the bird's dwindling habitat. The sighting changed the direction of the book, for which Gallagher won the Outdoor Writers Association of America's Best Book award for 2005. Gallagher is editor-in-chief of Living Bird magazine and of The Journal of the North American Falconers' Association.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xiii
Of People and Peckerwoods	p. 1
Me and Bobby Ray	p. 28
Jim and Nancy	p. 37
Mary, Mary	p. 54
White River Revisited	p. 66
A Paradise on Earth	p. 85
The Boxer	p. 100
The LSU Connection	p. 115
The Land of Dead Giants	p. 134
A Bayou with a View	p. 145
The Third Degree	p. 161
Back to the Bayou	p. 168
Where Sapsuckers Dare	p. 188
Trying to Prove the Existence of a Ghost	p. 205
Swamp Rats	p. 219
The Lazarus Bird	p. 235
Epilogue	p. 241
Acknowledgments and Sources	p. 251
Index	p. 259
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