"What an adventure. It started as a four-month, 15,000-mile road trip in 1935 to record bird songs. It led 20-year-old James T. Tanner, a graduate student at Cornell University at the time, on a multi-year quest to document the life history and habitat requirements of rare ivory-billed woodpeckers.
"Fortunately for the ornithological history of the ivory-bill — a species believed by many people to now be extinct — Jim Tanner kept meticulous scientific field notes. He also recorded his personal daily activities.
"Knoxville writer and naturalist Stephen Lyn Bales relied directly on Jim's field notes, diaries, and scientific publications along with the assistance and recollections of Jim's widow, Nancy Sheedy Tanner of Knoxville, to write "Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1935-1941" ( University of Tennessee Press).
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| Marcia Davis |
"Readers can curl up with Bales' book and get a true feel for Jim's daily life, his work, and his adventures as a woodpecker biologist searching remote southern swamps for signs and proof of ivory-bills."
For the rest of the Knoxville News Sentinel review go to: Marcia Davis.
For the rest of the Knoxville News Sentinel review go to: Marcia Davis.
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