Blue Goose ~ Day 269

February 20, 2015 ~ Tallulah, LA to Vicksburg, MS

I am always relieved when my mail (kindly sent by Dave VH to General Delivery in towns of my choice) is actually there. I choose small towns and only have to pay attention to the hours of operation as some close at noon for lunch or are just open in the afternoon. So far, there was a glitch only at the first pickup, but it was minor as they did in fact find my mail when they searched a little harder.

And then I went to Tensas (pronounced Tin-saw) NWR which is where Ivory-billed Woodpeckers were last unequivocally confirmed.

Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in display case at Tensas NWR - LA

WWW.CORNELL.BIRDS.EDU

In the spring of 1924, ornithologist Arthur Allen, founder of the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell, was traveling with his wife Elsa in Florida when they decided to check out an alleged sighting of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Ivory-bills had not been seen for several years. The Allens managed to find a pair and decided to study the birds by observing them but elected not to camp nearby for fear of disturbing what might be the last nesting pair. Much to their dismay, a pair of local taxidermists got a permit and shot the birds legally while the Allens were away. 

In the early 1930s Mason Spencer, a state legislator from northeastern Louisiana, shot a male ivory-bill in a huge tract of virgin timber, known as the Singer Tract, along Louisiana's Tensas River and word went out to the ornithological community.  

In 1935 Allen organized the Brand-Cornell University-American Museum of Natural History Ornithological Expedition. The expedition--including Cornell professors Arthur Allen and Peter Paul Kellogg, James Tanner, a graduate student, and bird artist George Miksch Sutton, who was also an ornithologist and curator of the Cornell bird collection--traveled across America to record motion pictures and sounds of vanishing birds.

One of the goals of the 1935 expedition was to check out the 81,000-acre Singer Tract where Mason had shot an Ivory-billed Woodpecker. After grilling Spencer about his sighting, the expedition headed into the swamp led by Jack Kuhn, the local game warden. After three days in the swamp, the expedition found an ivory-bill nest 40 feet above the ground in a cavity in a red maple. 

"The whole experience was like a dream," wrote Sutton in his 1936 book Birds in the Wilderness. "There we sat in the wild swamp, miles and miles from any highway, with two ivory-billed woodpeckers so close to us that we could see their eyes, their long toes, even their slightly curved claws with our binoculars." 

Allen set up Camp Ephilus--a play on the scientific name of the ivory-bill (Campephilus principalis) --within 200 yards of the nest and kept watch, recording every detail of the birds' behavior, for a couple of weeks. Peter Paul Kellogg had stayed in town moving all of the equipment from their truck to a wagon that would be hauled to the campsite by mules. It was impossible to get a motor vehicle into the swamp 

When Kellogg arrived, he and the crew produced the first motion pictures and sound recordings ever made of the ivory-billed woodpecker.

The sounds of the ivory-bills captured by Kellogg in 1935 are the ones still used for playback today by ivory-bill searchers. They are also the sounds against which modern recordings of possible kent calls are checked.  

From 1937 to 1939, Jim Tanner spent two years studying ivory-bills in the Singer Tract and searching for them across the South as part of his PhD dissertation for Cornell. Funded by the National Audubon Society, Tanner produced an in-depth report, which was later published as The Ivory-billed Woodpecker. In 1939 Tanner estimated there might have been 22 to 24 ivory-bills remaining in the United States, with not more than 6 to 8 birds at any one place. Although Tanner spent months checking out sightings of the ivory-bill around the South, the only birds he ever found were in the Singer Tract. He concluded that the only hope of saving the species lay in preserving that ancient forest. 

The Singer Tract (named after the sewing machine company who owned the land) was the largest piece of primeval forest left in the South. The logging rights to the Singer Tract had been sold to the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company. The National Audubon Society mounted a campaign to save the Singer Tract but it only accelerated the rate of cutting. The Chicago Mill and Lumber Company had no interest in saving the forest or compromising with John Baker, the president of the National Audubon Society. Baker wanted to buy the rights to the trees and obtained a pledge of $200,000 from the governor of Louisiana for that purpose.
The lumber company refused the offer and the Singer Sewing Machine Company, which still owned the land, refused to intercede. Richard Pough, who later became the first president of The Nature Conservancy, was sent by Audubon to search for the remaining ivory-bills in the Singer Tract in December 1943-January 1944. In a letter to John Baker he wrote, "It is sickening to see what a waste a lumber company can make of what was a beautiful forest." He found one female ivory-bill in a small stand of uncut timber, surrounded by destruction. 

The artist, Don Eckelberry, who also worked for Audubon, went to the swamp in April 1944 looking for the bird Pough had spotted. He found her at her roost hole and spent two weeks watching and sketching her. Eckelberry's time in the swamp is the last universally accepted sighting of one of these birds in the United States. 

The paved road into the refuge ran above the slow-moving, opaque, mud-colored river. I parked several times watching birds from my van, easily getting a dozen species, including the IBWO look-alike, a Pileated. I did not see one vehicle in two hours. It was warm enough, overcast without even a hint of a breeze, very tranquil....a memorable morning with the ghosts of Ivory-bills on the periphery of my consciousness.

Tensas River - Tensas NWR - LA

In the large VC, I was surprised and thrilled to see a pair of IBWOS in a display case along with an old movie of a female vigorously working a large cavity.  I asked if I could photograph the birds and was given permission. The thing is, these specimens had been displayed at Cornell originally but were then "filed" away in a bird specimen drawer. Tensas asked for them. After a lot of paperwork and negotiation, they received the woodpeckers on loan and eventually took possession permanently. Which is where they should be, given the history. The office manager was a friendly African-American woman who had worked there for "oh...30 years or so..." She lives in Talullah, 20 miles away. I thought of watching 30 years' worth of changing seasons on a refuge like this. Northern Mockingbirds were flying about as I stepped outside....

Tensas is an 80,000 acre refuge in the Mississippi Delta established for the purpose of protecting and managing hardwood bottomlands. It also has arrangements with local farmers who plant and manage refuge croplands and who, at harvest, leave 20% for wildlife. This practice is not unique to Tensas, and the cooperative effort benefits wildlife and local farmers. Nesting boxes are put up for Wood Ducks; 150 are banded each year. Reintroducing and protecting the endangered Louisiana Black Bear is another focus.

Tensas NWR- LA

Two other species historically found here are the endangered Red Wolf and the Florida Black Panther both of which are no longer resident due mainly to loss of habitat but at least are not extinct (yet).

There was a short auto route running through a swamp adjacent to the refuge where I saw ducks and Great Egrets (looking especially pristine in the grey-brown woods) and then continuing through open fields full of sparrows. Frustrating sparrows.

It was Friday and I headed for Vicksburg, just across the Mississippi, where I stayed for the next six days, mostly because of inclement weather. As there was enough work to do, I settled into a pleasant Best Western, working and watching grey skies and rain and ice and snow.

Red-bellied Woodpecker - Tensas NWR - LA