Imperial Dreams makes Top 10 Science & Health Books of 2013 list

I just heard that my latest book, Imperial Dreams, was one of the books chosen for Booklist's Top 10 Science & Health Books of 2013 list. I was honored to be on the same list as E. O. Wilson and the other authors. The reviewer said, "Gallagher sets the gold standard for nature writing in this chronicle of his search for the possibly extinct imperial woodpecker in Mexican territory held by drug traffickers."

Next stop, the Explorers Club—November 4

I'll be taking my Imperial Woodpecker talk to the Explorers Club in New York City on Monday night, November 4. There's a reception at 6:00, followed by my talk at 7:00. Hope all my New York friends can make it. Here's a link for more information.

In the vast mountain pine forests of Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental lived a bird like no other—a spectacular giant woodpecker, two feet in length, largest of its clan that ever lived. With the deepest black plumage and brilliant, snow-white feathers that show as a white shield on its back, the Imperial is the closest relative of America's famed Ivory-billed Woodpecker. The last documented sighting of an Imperial Woodpecker took place in 1956, and yet rumors still persist among the mountain villagers that this bird still lives on in the remotest reaches of this mighty mountain range. 

To find out if the rumors could possibly be true, author Tim Gallagher set out on a harrowing journey through the high country of the Sierra Madre, a vast, lawless region—now the epicenter of illegal drug growing in Mexico. Join Tim for a fascinating evening as he shares his adventures in search of this enigmatic ghost bird.

Tim Gallagher (FN '06) is an award-winning author, wildlife photographer, and magazine editor. He received the Explorers Club Presidents Award for Conservation in 2006. He is currently editor-in-chief of Living Bird, the flagship publication of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Tim's lifelong interest in wilderness exploration has taken him twice to northern Greenland, where he made two open-boat voyages up the coast to study nesting seabirds and falcons, and to the hinterlands of Iceland, where he climbed lofty cliffs to learn more about the spectacular Gyrfalcon, the world's largest falcon. In addition to his latest book, Imperial Dreams, Tim is the author of Falcon Fever, The Grail Bird, Parts Unknown, and Wild Bird Photography.

To make a reservation, please call (212) 628-8383 or send an email to: reservations@explorers.org

Steve Bodio Reviews Imperial Dreams

    (Photo by Tim Gallagher)

Imperial Dreams by Tim Gallagher is a natural history of the world’s most spectacular woodpecker and a mystery: a forensic inquiry into what, despite the narrator’s hopes, looks like the death of a species. It starts as a lighthearted adventure and becomes a tragedy and a tale of terror. It may be Gallagher’s best book yet, one to excite adventure travelers who might never pick up a “bird book,” while telling an unforgettable tale of loss.

Several years ago, Gallagher was one of the rediscoverers of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. His success led him to think about its relative, the legendary Imperial Woodpecker (or Pitoreal ) of Mexico. I do not use “legendary” lightly; although the ivory-bill was the largest woodpecker in the United States, the imperial was the largest that ever lived. The raven-sized male, with its red Woody Woodpecker crest, looked like a huge exaggeration of the ivory-bill. But the female had a unique forward-curving black curl recognizable even in pre-Columbian petroglyphs. They knocked such large chunks of bark off dying trees that their sign was unmistakable. Their home was the cold montane pine forests of the Sierra Madre, with grizzly bear, wolf, jaguar, trout, and Thick-billed Parrot, all vanished or vanishing. Though they had been seen on occasion into the 1970s, there were few credible recent reports. Their forests had been cut over by loggers, and were now the virtual property of drug traffickers— the narcotraficantes—whose reign of terror discouraged all outsiders.

Tim Gallagher was born in England, raised in southern California, and is a longtime resident of Ithaca, New York. He is tall, thin, and gray-haired. For such a person to wander the Sierra Madre with pictures of woodpeckers, asking nervous peasants about them, takes either extreme courage or foolhardiness. But that’s just what he did.

The final of his five expeditions started optimistically in Durango, but before they left for the mountains they were “befriended” by an obvious drug dealer, and abandoned by one of the ornithologists who had agreed to accompany them. Despite such omens, they continued.

Tim often digresses in the book to explore the not-too-distant past of the Sierra Madre, telling stories of pioneer anthropologist Carl Lumholtz, and of famed ecologist and essayist Aldo Leopold, who wanted to establish the largest park in Mexico there. He reminds us that the Apaches held out in the Sierra, with bounties on their scalps, until the 1930s. They meet many decent people, though most are wary of these strange outsiders. They see opium poppies, and are warned off more than one trail. The country has been logged, and the forest is second or third growth, with ground plants eaten to stubble by goats and burros. They see one mesa across a chasm that looks like better habitat, but are warned that it belongs to the Zetas—a fearsome drug cartel made up of paramilitaries once part of the Mexican military—who will kill them if they enter. What they do not see is any sign of the woodpecker. They have a device that makes a double-knock sound that mimics the distinctive drumming of the pitoreal and most other woodpeckers in the Campephilus genus, but they never hear a response.

Their drive out of the mountains is a nightmare. The relatively benign drug lord who promised to meet them and accompany them—and warned them not to leave without him—does not show. Without “Carlos” and his Uzi submachine gun, they must drive, unescorted, for a long day over hideous dirt roads, at no more than five miles per hour. They ask a local village elder if it is safe, and he tells them: “Along the road, everything is quiet—the only thing that happened is that a few houses were burned down”—this since they entered, a couple of weeks earlier. They stop for snacks, and the proprietor seems nervous; later they find that a villager had been kidnapped and held for ransom there the day before.

Tim tries to be optimistic about the fate of the pitoreal, as he does about the ivory-bill. Although long-lived individuals may have survived into our time, do they have much future? The Imperial Woodpecker’s fate might seem even grimmer than the ivory-bill’s; the researchers find evidence that loggers repeatedly encouraged shooting and poisoning the bird to ensure its demise. If true, it represents a case of successful, conscious biocide; worse, one done for imaginary reasons—the destruction of trees that were already infested with beetle grubs. Tim’s excellent adventure contains a dark warning for any species that is perceived as an economic threat.

An upcoming talk at Montezuma Audubon in Savannah, New York.

Nature of Montezuma Lecture 

Imperial Dreams: Tracking the Imperial Woodpecker Through the Wild Sierra Madre

Saturday, October 5, 2013
2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.

In the vast mountain pine forests of Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental lived a bird like not other—a spectacular giant woodpecker, two feet in length, largest of its clan that ever lived. With the deepest black plumage and brilliant snow-white feathers that show as a white shield on its back, the Imperial Woodpecker is the closest relative of America's famed Ivory-billed Woodpecker. The last documented sighting of an Imperial Woodpecker took place in 1956, and yet rumors still persist among the mountain villagers that this bird still lives in the remotest reaches of this mighty mountain range. Join award-winning author and wildlife photographer Tim Gallagher at the Montezuma Audubon Center (2295 State Route 89, Savannah, New York) for a fascinating program as he shares his adventures in search of this enigmatic ghost bird. Fee: $3.00/child, $5.00/ adult, and $15/family. Free for Friends of the Montezuma Wetlands Complex. Space is limited. Registration required. Call (315) 365-3588 or email montezuma@audubon.org.

OWAA conference keynote on Imperial Woodpecker

I gave the keynote address at the OWAA 2013 annual conference this morning at Lake Placid, New York. Of course, my talk was all about the Imperial Woodpecker.

Keynote

Imperial Dreams: Searching for the World's Rarest Bird 
in the Drug-War Zone of Northern Mexico
Speaker: Tim Gallagher
Lussi Ballroom (8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.)

In the vast mountain pine forests of Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental lived a bird like no other—a spectacular giant woodpecker, two feet in length, largest of its clan that ever lived. The last documented slighting took place in 1956, and yet rumors still persist among the mountain villagers that the bird still lives on in the remotest reaches of this mighty mountain range—a vast, lawless region, and now the epicenter of illegal drug growing in Mexico. To find out if the rumors could possibly be true, author Tim Gallagher set out on a harrowing journey through the high country of northern Mexico. Join Tim for a fascinating program as he shares his adventures in search of this enigmatic ghost bird.

My latest radio interview . . .

I was a guest on Ray Brown's Boston-based Talkin' Birds radio show yesterday. Here's a link to a recording of the show. My interview starts 9:50 minutes into the recording.

Reviewed in The Nature Conservancy's Science Blog

Here's a new review of Imperial Dreams from Cool Green Science, The Nature Conservancy's science blog.

My latest radio interview

I did a live interview yesterday on WSKG radio's weekly author program, Off the Page, discussing my search for the Imperial Woodpecker in the mountains of northwestern Mexico. Here's a link to the show's webpage, which has a tape of my interview: Off the Page/Imperial Dreams.

Reviewed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune

How to Paint a Pair of Imperial Woodpeckers . . .

Here's a fascinating blog post by artist Julie Zickefoose, describing the process she went through in painting an illustration of an Imperial Woodpecker pair. The illustration appeared with her review of Imperial Dreams in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. 

Speaking in Ithaca on May 15, 2013

I hope some of my Ithaca-area friends will attend my talk on Monday, May 15, at 6:00 p.m. at the Tompkins County Public Library. Copies of Imperial Dreams will be on sale at the event. Details below:

My next Imperial Dreams reading . . .

This Sunday, May 5, at 4:30 p.m. at Buffalo Street Books, 215 North Cayuga Street, Ithaca, New York.

Conservation Africa Review

Bird Watcher's Digest Review

Searching for a Ghost Bird

Several people have asked me about an earlier piece Science Friday did about my search for the Imperial Woodpecker. (This was before I wrote Imperial Dreams.) In case you'd like to listen to it, here's a link: Science Friday: Searching for a Ghost Bird.

Imperial Dreams in Cornell Alumni Magazine

My next talk is at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Back to the Bayou . . .

After my Imperial Woodpecker talk at the Arkansas Literary Festival in Little Rock yesterday, I saw my old Ivory-billed Woodpecker chasing friends Bobby Harrison (center) and David Luneau (right). As soon as the event was over, Bobby and I blasted to Bayou de View in eastern Arkansas and spent the rest of the day canoeing through the swamp forest, revisiting the site where we'd seen an ivory-bill nine years ago.

A Follow-up Interview . . .

                             (Photo by Tim Gallagher)

Genero Quintana greeted us warmly at the door of his home in the foothills of the Sierra Madre. In his late seventies, he had a kind face, dark and creased from countless years in the sun, and a thick shock of gray hair, combed back. It had taken us weeks to locate him. The house was full of people, including his wife and daughter as well as some teenagers, perhaps his grandchildren, and we all sat together at the kitchen table as I asked him about his Imperial Woodpecker sightings.

It had been about fifteen years since Martjan Lammertink and Roger Otto had met him, when he lived on a remote rancho in the high country and rode through the forest every day, taking care of his cattle. Of all the people they interviewed during their travels through the mountains in the 1990s, he had been the most impressive. He told them about two Imperial Woodpeckers (pitoreales) he had seen within the past five years and another in the 1970s. 

Quintana was quite familiar with the species, having seen them often as a boy, before the old-growth forests nearby were cut in the late 1940s and '50s. And the other species a person might confuse with an Imperial—the Pale-billed and Lineated Woodpeckers—do not occur in that part of Mexico. But what impressed Martjan and Roger most was that Quintana mentioned his sightings nonchalantly, before they had even expressed any interest in the birds. He described the species accurately and picked it out instantly when they showed him some Mexican woodpecker illustrations.

“Mr. Quintana made the impression of being a sincere man and a careful observer,” they wrote in a report for Birdlife International. “The habitat where he saw his last Imperial Woodpeckers fits the requirements of the species well (although the patches are small). Since Mr. Quintana rides daily through the forest and came upon the bird only twice in the past five years, it is understandable that such an occasionally visiting bird would leave no traces.”

He told Martjan and Roger that the pitoreal was not a resident species in the area where he’d had the most recent sightings, but he had come upon wandering, solitary birds in 1977, 1990, and 1993. He said the last two woodpeckers had black crests, so they were obviously females. Martjan speculated that it may have been the same bird returning after a three-year absence though there’s no way to be sure. Quintana’s last sighting had been sometime between February and May of 1993, and it had flown away southward.

Quintana told me he was born in 1933 and grew up in the remote village of Cienaga de Horcones, where perhaps fewer than two-dozen families live. When he was growing up, he would often see pitoreales in the big trees on the hillsides nearby. But all the decent-sized trees were logged in the late 1940s, and the birds quickly vanished. He remembered meeting Martjan and Roger and taking them to the places where he'd seen the birds, and he mentioned some other details about his sightings. He had seen them in shallow canyons where patches of big trees and numerous snags remained, he said. But sadly, he had not seen any other imperial woodpeckers after the lone female in 1993.

At the end of our conversation, I took a picture of Don Genero holding an illustration of some Mexican woodpeckers. I showed it to Martjan later, and he seemed delighted. "How did you ever find him?" he asked.

.

Eyewitness Testimony . . .

                (Photo by Tim Gallagher)

Pedro Fimbres was 90 years old when I interviewed him a few years ago, but he had a timeless look about him: tall and thin with brown weathered skin and dark eyes. I could easily picture him as a medieval Spanish nobleman in a castle in Andalusia.

At first we spoke about the Sierra Madre Apaches and his family’s history—his uncle, Francisco Fimbres, had launched a vendetta against the Apaches in the late 1920s after they had killed his wife and kidnapped his infant son, and it was a horrific tale of vengeance and bloodshed. But then I noticed the limb of a tree, riddled with holes, hanging on the wall outside. It was obviously from an Acorn Woodpecker granary tree, where the birds stash their acorns. Pedro told me the limb came in a cord of firewood he had bought several years earlier. He liked the look of it, so he hung it outside his saddle shop.

In the old days when he traveled frequently on horseback in the mountains, Pedro had often seen carpinteros like the ones that bored holes in the limb, and he enjoyed their antics. He talked about his experiences, and it quickly became clear what an excellent observer he was, so I switched my line of questioning from Apaches to woodpeckers. I was eager to find out whether he had ever seen an Imperial Woodpecker or heard anyone talk about them, but I didn’t want to lead the interview or drop any hints about what I was looking for.

I pulled out my woodpecker illustrations and invited him to look through them, asking him if he remembered ever seeing any of them. The first one in the stack was the Acorn Woodpecker.

“Si, si,” he said, pointing at the granary log on his wall and talking animatedly. “El poquito carpintero.”

He paused for a moment when he flipped to the picture of the Lineated Woodpecker, then shook his head. But when he looked at the Imperial Woodpecker, his face lit up. “Ah, si, si. El pitoreal. Carpintero gigante,” he said in an excited singsong voice. He obviously knew the bird well and was genuinely enthusiastic. Pitoreal,” he said again, holding the illustration gleefully. “Muy bonito carpintero.” He gushed about the bird, telling us how beautiful and amazing it was. He had often run across them when he was younger, he said, but only in the high country, in the great mesa pine forests.

They were never common, he said. He sometimes went weeks without seeing any but would then run across a group of five or six or more. They were difficult to miss because they were so noisy, their trumpet-like calls echoing through the forest. And they were very approachable. One time he was traveling on horseback with another man when they came across a group of them. The man told him he had heard that the birds have a diamond bill, and he wanted to shoot one to see if it was true. Pulling out his saddle gun, the man shot one of the woodpeckers, shattering its shoulder and bringing it tumbling to the ground, shrieking loudly in distress. As the two men went to pick up the bird, the other pitoreales flew in, chattering excitedly, just a few feet away. The man wanted to shoot more of them, but Pedro wouldn’t allow it. He could see no point in it.

I was in shock. Not only had I found someone with an intimate knowledge of the Imperial Woodpecker, he had once even held a wounded one in his hands and prevented some others from being shot. He was so lucid and his observations so detailed, providing the kind of scientific data so lacking with this species. He told me these groups of pitoreales were usually about twenty kilometers apart, which gave me a better idea than anything else I’ve read about their population density and how far they ranged in their foraging. And then he told me about how he’d watched some Imperial Woodpeckers raid the granary of some Acorn Woodpeckers. The huge woodpeckers would pry off the bark of the tree with their massive pearl-white bills, he said, sending acorns raining to the ground, then drop down to eat them as the tiny Acorn Woodpeckers flew around, furiously protesting the theft.

And it was clear his testimony was real. These mountains are so isolated. Few people living in the Sierra Madre have read anything about birds. All they have is their own observations. This made it all the more clear to me how important it was to continue my interviews. The Imperial Woodpecker was never adequately studied by science. Anything that can be found out now, while a few of these witnesses to the Imperial Woodpecker still live, adds vital data to our knowledge of this species. And if by some miracle these interviews led me to a pair of the birds, still nesting in some remote corner of the Sierra Madre, I thought, perhaps the species could yet be rescued from extinction.