June 3, 2005

The Miraculous Sighting of a Vanished Bird

By ANDREW FURMAN

Is it just me or does the world seem to have grown a bit larger since the announcement of several recent confirmed sightings of an ivory-billed woodpecker? The ornithological implications are enormous. The last confirmed sighting of the bird was in 1944. Pretty much every recent North American bird-watching guidebook writes off the ivory-billed as "extinct" in its prefatory pages, alongside a handful of unlucky cohorts, like the passenger pigeon and Carolina parakeet. For amateur birders like

Digital or Print Subscription

Web Pass

Already have an account? Log In Now.