LAST WEEK'S announcement of the redis- covery of a creature long given up for extinct was an electric shock to millions around the world.
If only I had known.
If only I had known three weeks ago when, by sheer random chance, I drove through the heart of the eastern Arkansas wild lands where an ivory-billed woodpecker has been found, I would have stopped and stayed awhile.
Returning from Arizona, following the interstates, I caught blue-line fever. You know blue-line fever. That's when the urge to get off those clogged concrete arteries takes over and you want to see real towns and talk to real people and maybe, just maybe, get the chance to discover something unusual, something that hasn't been put in your path "for your enjoyment" (or annoyance).
Well, I did that in Arkansas, studying the map and giving the nod to a long detour eastward along U.S. 64 on a route that took me nearly 100 miles across a low-lying forested wetlands region known as the Big Woods, with no sizable towns and countless meandering waterways. One guidebook characterizes the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge here as one of the eight most important wetlands in the United States.
When the news broke last week that a lone Arkansas paddler, deep within this wilderness, had spotted the striking and unmistakable ivory-bill, I was certainly able to make the connection.
The initial discovery was made more than a year ago, but kept secret for fear of endangering this most endangered of species. While scientists from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology have since confirmed and repeated the sighting seven times, much remains to be known.
Birds that have been seen to date have all been males, leading to speculation on the existence of a viable breeding population of the ivory-bill.
Of course, I didn't see one of the fabled birds when I drove past the Big Woods, but the mere fact that I have seen where it lives is meaningful to me. And while I have never paddled in those vast lowlands of the Mississippi River basin, I have paddled extensively in swamps of the Southeast, which resemble this more westerly habitat.
A friend called this week to talk about the rediscovery of the giant woodpecker. She said some people have asked how a large, loud, brightly marked bird could escape detection for more than 60 years within these United States. And she said, answering the question herself: "They must not travel much."
Indeed, despite our rapid urbanization, despite the plowing under and paving over of such enormous tracts of land, there are still places few ever see--and where ivory-billed woodpeckers could hide in plain sight since 1944.
A couple of weeks after returning home, I joined friends at Huntley Meadows Park in Fairfax to hear a Massachusetts scientist talk about the songs of birds and his lifetime learning about them. Donald Kroodsma, an authority on bird vocalizations, led us into the park's wet meadows with the large parabolic "ear" he uses to discover the secrets of avian audio.
The voice of a robin or a cardinal outside my window will never sound the same to me again.
Kroodsma, aiming his antenna at a singing bird, is able to show how its song starts on high notes and sweeps down to lower ones by shifting from one of its two voice boxes to the other. Yet the human ear detects no shift in the seamless virtuosity of its song.
People often ask, he said, whether birds learn their songs or if they are inherited. The answer, he said, is that it depends on the species. Another question he often gets is whether birds can improvise or copy their songs, and the answer, he said, is that some species seem to make it up as they sing, and many can imitate and vary their songs. What's more, individual birds of a kind are distinct in the way they sing, and careful listening often separates one from another.
Kroodsma visited Huntley Meadows in connection with the release of his new book, "The Singing Life of Birds: The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong."
The book, which earns my highest recommendation, includes a CD to introduce readers to the intriguing world of the songs of birds. I might add that not only is Kroodsma an authority on this topic, there is absolutely nothing dry and dull about this scientist, either in person or in text. I never had any idea there was so much to discover in the realm of the songs and calls of birds.
I couldn't resist calling the professor a few days ago about the ivory-billed woodpecker.
Kroodsma, professor emeritus of biology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a visiting fellow at the Cornell laboratory, said news of the discovery is tremendously exciting but he wants to hear high-quality audio recordings in order to study them.
To listen to this voice from the primeval past, by the way, visit the Web page (fws.gov/cache river) for the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge and click the link to the audio recording. It sounds like nothing I've ever heard--and is not remotely like the pileated woodpecker, with which some observers have confused it.
Resources: There are numerous good Web sites with information on the ivory-billed woodpecker and its rediscovery. Any Web search engine will provide this information. One of the best, most comprehensive and accurate of these is at the Cornell laboratory: birds.cornell.edu/ivory.
Donald Kroodsma's book "The Singing Life of Birds: The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong" is published by Houghton Mifflin Co., 482 pages, $28.
PAUL SULLIVAN, a former reporter with The Free Lance-Star, is a freelance writer living in Spotsylvania County. Contact him by mail at The Free Lance-Star, 616 Amelia St., Fredericksburg, Va. 22401; by fax at 373-8455; or by e-mail at PBSullivan2@cs.com.