(no subject)

[which_chick]

I am done making cookies. Really. For real. I'm tired of cookies and I do not want to make any more any time soon. Next December is probably when I will be ready to consider making cookies again. All I need now is a pie and I'll be all done with holiday cooking obligations. I would have done the pie this AM but I didn't have enough of the right kind of flour to proceed. (My kitchen has three kinds of flour, depending on what I want to do with it. Whole wheat flour is not good for pie crusts. High-gluten white bread flour is also not good for pie crusts.) I'll hit the grocery store tonight and there will be pie tomorrow so that I don't have that hanging over me any further. I don't like being Damocles.

I saw a pileated woodpecker out the window this morning. The pileated is probably the largest woodpecker in the eastern United States since I'm pretty sure the ivory-billed woodpecker is extinct. (gwangi, can I get an Amen or whatever on this?) Pileated woodpeckers are about the size of a crow, striking black and white birds with red-crested heads. Although I grew up here, in these woods, I never saw one in person until about two years ago. Now, while they're not an everyday sight, they're around enough that anyone who spends a reasonable amount of time in the woods and isn't completely oblivious can see one. I'd say that, these days, they're as easy to see as wild turkeys.

Comments

[gwangi.livejournal.com]

Heh. The existence (or lack thereof) of the IBW is a matter of great debate among birders. There as a sighting in upstate Cuba back at the end of the 90s, and it was credible enough that Castro actually did something halfway decent and declared nearly a third of the county off limits. Granted, he was probably hiding his drug-running operations or something, but it's still a nice guesture. The problem is that he REALLY declared the area closed. Including to capitalist pig scientists who want to go see if the observer was right. So there's been no actual confirmation one way or another.

The last IBW sighting in the US was back in the late 1930s, in a swamp in Louisana. A paper company promptly cut down every tree in the region (all in the name of progress, of course), and the birds have been considered extinct ever since. A couple of years ago, a team from Cornell's Lab of Ornithology went down there with a bunch of sound-activated tape recorders, hoping to hear the distinctive double-knock that IBWs are (were) known for. Here's (http://www.birds.cornell.edu/MacaulayLibrary/audio/Ivory-billed_Woodpecker.html) an example of how they sounded, recorded in 1938. The team came home empty handed, but they're going to try again in a couple of years. There have been enough credible sightings over the last 50-odd years that we shouldn't quite give up hope yet.

Further reading includes:
Hope is the thing with feathers (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0446677493/ref=pd_sim_b_3/103-5477801-4849420?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance), which is the saddest book I've ever read.
Tanner's (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0486428370/ref=wl_it_dp/103-5477801-4849420?%5Fencoding=UTF8&coliid=I18ZD058DWX8EO&v=glance&colid=3CJCQFKT9YK4U) 1942 doctoral thesis on the species - the only (afaik) hard scientific study available, it's been on my amazon wishlist for ages. One of these days, I'll have to actually buy it.
And, last but not least, Howard Waldrop's brilliant short story The Ugly Chickens (http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/waldrop/), which started me off on this whole extinct bird kick and remains my single favorite short story of all time.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I read a not-horribly ancient article (last two or three years) about how Cuba, despite being operated by the bad guys in terms of political freedom had better ecology than most of its less-communist neighbors. (Link: http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues03/may03/cuba.html) Cuba might could have IBWs. They're close enough to Florida for boat people, too, so it's not a horrible stretch for birds. Also, there are other strange and wonderful not-extinct-Gotcha! things in the forests of Cuba, like the almiqui.

I was up to speed on "The Ugly Chickens" because I saw that in your LJ the other day (I'd run out of porn, as it happens, and was scrolling down through the older entries in other peoples' livejournals for something to do) and went to go read it. (It was delightful, had a very Dueling Banjos feel to it.) The whole extinct birds thing was why I asked you about the IBW. I figured you might know.