Imperial Dreams: 2021

Monday, March 22, 2021

The Return of "Extinct" Species

A film crew from "CBS Sunday Morning" and reporter Conor Knighton came along with Bobby Harrison and me last year on one of our searches for Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in an Arkansas Bayou, just before the COVID lockdown. The program aired on March 21, 2021. Here are some photos (below) and a link to the show.

Jane Pauley introduced the show.

Bobby Harrison (left) with Conor Knighton and Tim Gallagher.

Tim Gallagher with the field sketches he and Bobby drew right after their sighting in 2004.

Tim and Bobby on the day of their Ivory-billed Woodpecker sighting, February 27, 2004.

Bobby Harrison and Conor Knighton.

About Me

I'm the author of six books, including my latest, Born to Fish (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; May 2018) about world-class angler Greg Myerson and his conservation efforts on behalf of the striped bass.

My other recent book is Imperial Dreams, about my search for the Imperial Woodpecker of Mexico, the largest woodpecker that ever lived. Two feet in length, with the deepest black plumage and brilliant, snow-white flight feathers that showed as a white shield on its lower back, the Imperial Woodpecker lived only in the high country of northwestern Mexico. The last documented sighting of the species took place in 1956, and many scientists have already written the bird's epitaph. But stories persist of lone Imperial Woodpeckers flying yet over the most remote pine forests of the Sierra Madre.

I began searching for these birds about ten years ago and interviewing people who remembered seeing them. It was tough. The mountains have become a major center of drug growing where you often encounter AK-47-toting drug traffickers and other dangerous people.