| View Larger Image | In Search of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker | Paperbackby Jerome A. Jackson (Author)
| List Price: | $15.95 | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Harper Paperbacks | | Page Count: | 304 Pages | | Publication Date: | May 01, 2006 | | Sales Rank: | 809,742th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
In Search of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker is a complete natural history of one of the most exciting and rare birds in the world. Noted ornithologist Jerome A. Jackson takes the reader on his fantastic and personal quest, providing detailed insights into the bird's lifestyle, habitat, and cultural significance, examining its iconic status from the late 1800s to the present in advertising, conservation, and lore. As he relates searches for the bird by John James Audubon, Alexander Wilson, and others, Jackson offers anecdotal tales illuminating the methods of early naturalists, including how one captive ivory-bill destroyed a naturalist's hotel room in a desperate attempt to escape. Jackson's search for one of the few remaining ivory-bills takes him across the United States and into Cuba. A new epilogue disputes the putative rediscovery of the bird in April 2005. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 6 reviews)
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The Ivory-billed book with an Experts Voice by Brian Allen (Manistee, MI USA)  4 Stars
January 02, 2008
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.
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Boring pseudoscientific drivel by Bill Gibson (Chicago, IL USA)  1 Stars
May 26, 2006
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.
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A good read by Tamara Nichols (San Francisco, CA USA)  5 Stars
May 08, 2005
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.
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Correction to below review by Glenn Angel 4 Stars
April 29, 2005
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.
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Good, but enough material for a whole book? by Rob Neyer (Earth)  3 Stars
October 11, 2004
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.
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SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker
by James T. Tanner (Author)
All who seek the elusive Ivory-billed Woodpecker rely on this elegant treatise from 1942, an extensive profile of the species' characteristics and habits that includes its original distribution patterns; the history of its disappearance; and its feeding, nesting, and breeding habits. 20 halftones, 17 tables, 22 other illustrations.
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| The Grail Bird: The Rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker
by Tim Gallagher (Author)
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 persuaded the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology to mount a massive search for evidence of the bird's existence. The...
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| The Race to Save the Lord God Bird (The Boston Globe-Horn Book Award (Awards))
by Phillip Hoose (Author)
The tragedy of extinction is explained through the dramatic story of a legendary bird, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and of those who tried to possess it, paint it, shoot it, sell it, and, in a last-ditch effort, save it. A powerful saga that sweeps through two hundred years of history, it introduces artists like John James Audubon, bird collectors like William Brewster, and finally a new breed of scientist in Cornell's Arthur A. "Doc" Allen and his young ornithology student, James Tanner,...
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| Ivorybill Hunters: The Search for Proof in a Flooded Wilderness
by Geoffrey E. Hill (Author)
The last documented sighting of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker--one of the rarest and most intriguing animals in the world--was noted over 50 years ago. Long thought to be extinct, the 2005 announcement of a sighting in Arkansas sparked tremendous enthusiasm and hope that this species could yet be saved. But the subsequent failure of a massive search to relocate Ivorybills in Arkansas made hope for the species' revival short-lived.
Here, noted ornithologist Geoffrey Hill tells the story of...
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| Stalking the Ghost Bird: The Elusive Ivory-Billed Woodpecker in Louisiana
by Michael K. Steinberg (Author)
When a kayaker thought he spotted an ivory-billed woodpecker in 2004, the birding community took notice. Two birders traveled to the bayou where the sighting occurred, well aware that the last confirmed sighting of an ivory-bill had taken place over sixty years ago. Both men caught a glimpse of the bird, and a team began to search the surrounding swamplands. Even after long hours of surveillance and multiple sightings, the scientists cautiously refused to disclose their rediscovery of the...
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