"The Thing with Feathers"

As a child my family was very big into ornithology and herpetology (the study of reptiles) so we toured the country in our little camper and went hiking, backpacking and canoeing so from a very young age I knew how to identify and track many animals, especially birds. So the answer to Rachel's question is very complicated. I know I could identify the bird if I saw it, because I have worked with palliated woodpeckers for many years and all that separates the two birds is a stripe and the color of their eyes. The bigger question would be what to do with that information. After some thought and reflection I think I would end up going to the Nature Conservatory very quietly and giving them the GPS location of the sighting so they could lead a more in depth search. Its hard to know what the balance is between enough press and too much because as the article stated sometimes our helpful blundering ends up causing more harm then good, like the case of the condor chick. These sorts of events need to have some media coverage otherwise the event would not be looked at as a credible source; but if you have too much media then everyone and their brother is going to be out there trying to catch a glimpse of something that might or might not be there. This is why I would quietly go to the Nature Conservatory and let them choose what to do with press and search parties. I don't think that the amount of fame that would come with announcing that you had found the bird out be worth the possible harm that would come to the environment and the bird itself.

This is a very tricky topic filled with "ifs" and "buts" which makes it a particularly hard topic to cover. It almost reminds me of the search or Bigfoot, though I do not believe in it some people do. There have been countless sightings of it but still nothing really tangible. When do you decide to stop the hunt? When is it safe to say its gone? These are interesting questions and thats what makes this subject so hard to cover.