"The Thing with Feathers"

This 2006 article, entitled “The Thing with Feathers” Wells Tower writes of Gene Sparling’s unlikely discovery of the extinct ivory-billed woodpecker and how it led to a massive secretive search for this bird. Tower’s use of colloquial language in the title and throughout the entire article helped him engage with a broader audience, not just the usual ornithologist. His vivid details and description of the search and the surrounding town kept the readers engaged and feel as if they are somehow personally connected to it. The story is uplifting in that it tells of an extinct bird prevailing even though mankind had destroyed its home and hunted them down.

In response to Rachael’s question, if I were ever in this situation I don’t think I’d be able to tell what kind of bird it was even if it was sitting right in front of me. But if I could, I’d like to think that I’d go about it just as Sparling did, but like him, I’d be afraid of people calling me crazy or accusing me of nailing taxidermy ivory-billed woodpeckers to a tree. If the universities had jumped on board like they did with Sparling, I don’t think I would have dedicated two years of my life to sitting in a swamp looking for this mysterious bird.