Sixty years ago, America’s largest woodpecker became extinct. Five years ago, it was pronounced by scholars to be alive and well in a swamp near Brinkley, Arkansas. Last year, Bay Area filmmaker Scott Crocker made a documentary about how people took that news.
They took it by turning the bird into a cottage industry. Brinkley was transformed. Birders flocked in from all corners. The government diverted funds from other bird-conservation efforts to restoring the woodpecker’s habitat. Then came a closer look at the plumage, and a questioning of the evidence: What if what actually had been captured for half a second on that accidental amateur video was a pileated woodpecker, not an ivory-billed woodpecker? Well, that would be a big deal too, as the former is not thought to be extinct.
Most people seem to agree that a live ivory-billed woodpecker would be a sight to see. Its lore records the nickname “Lord God Bird” on account of some awestruck spectator once having said that upon witnessing one. Also: “Elvis in Feathers.” It is easy enough to understand how an obsessive subculture might spring up around such a creature.
Ghost Bird is the name of Crocker’s film, at last making its Bay Area premiere this week, and of course that gets at the heart of the matter too. What does it mean if it’s really still alive? What does it mean if we can’t admit it isn’t? As one of Crocker’s interviewees points out, the real story of the Arkansas ivory-bill sighting is “a debate of hope versus skepticism.”
