Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Seeing the "Lord God bird"

A new documentary is coming out concerning the presumed extinction, search for, and rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker Campephilus principalis. It's titled Lord God Bird, which is a bit confusing because it's not based on Philip Hoose's excellent book The Race to Save the Lord God Bird. The ivory-bill got the nickname "Lord God" or "Good God" from the exclamations people supposedly made when they got a look at the nation's largest woodpecker.
For now, the Voice of America has posted the story along with links to the 1935 film of two ivory-bills - a clip which was long believed to be the last film of an ivory-bill anyone would ever record - and the video taken in 2004 that many (though not all) experts accepted as proof the bird still lived.

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