100 year milestone

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Special note:


On this date, March 6, 1914, Dr. James T., Jim Tanner, the protagonist in my book Ghost Birds, was born.

Also on this date, 24 years later: March 6, 1938, Jim took the famous photographs of the nestling ivory-bill perched on the head of game warden J. J. Kuhn's head.

This famous series of photos are the only ones known to exist of a NESTLING ivory-billed woodpecker.

For more information about that day in 1938, go to my article I penned in 2010, click: Smithsonian magazine. 

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heavy hearted

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Nancy Tanner and me, 2010.

A personal remembrance:

I first met Nancy Tanner in the early 1990s. We were both members of the local bird club: the Knoxville Chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society (KTOS). She was also a regular at Ijams Nature Center where I work. 

In time, I became an invited guest for lunches at her home in South Knoxville. Nancy's nimble mind needed to be exercised. A thoroughbred has to run. She loved to converse, tell stories, jokes, unleash a sharp repartee, a give and take à la Noël Coward. We'd talk birds, nature, books, magazine articles, current events and sports. She loved tennis and the Olympics. And, of course, we'd talk about her Jim.

Her home had not really changed one iota since he passed away in 1991. 

It was at one of those lunches in October of 2005 that a topic for a book came up. I was just finishing the manuscript for my first book "Natural Histories" published by the University of Tennessee Press. We were talking, as we often did, about Jim and his Cornell fieldwork in the 1930s on the ivory-billed woodpecker, when I said, "Someone needs to write a book." And after a short pause, I said, "That someone should be me." 

Thus a project was born.

Nancy was the last living person to have a universally accepted sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker. That happened in December 1941. She was with her late husband Jim (James T. Tanner) in the Singer Tract in northeast Louisiana.

Over the past six years, Nancy and I became good friends. For most of that time, I would see or at least talk to her almost weekly.

The first three years: 2006-09, we met to discuss and assembly the piles of reference I needed to copy, absorb. Over time, I assembled three-ring binders of material, not knowing exacting what I would need when I actually sat down to write. Pulling together a book is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle except all the pieces do not come in one box. They are scattered helter-skelter. But, in time, the pieces just slowly fall into place.

Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1935-1941 was published by UT in the fall of 2010. It was followed by an article in Smithsonian magazine about our research which I penned. Nancy turns up in the book, near the end after she and Jim both moved to Tennessee (separately) to take new teaching positions at E.T.S.U. in Johnson City. That's where they first met.

For the next two years after the book's publication, Nancy and I worked to promote Ghost Birds locally, doing numerous talks and book signings.

We developed a playful banter, because she loved to laugh and make me laugh.

She called me her "young friend" and never wanted to talk about health, aches and pains or even aging in general. Those topics were for old people. When you were with Nancy, you were in a match of playful minds. And she used wit the way a fencer uses a foil. En garde. Prêt. Allez. Oh, yes. So true. Touché. Or the way Oscar Wilde used a well turned phrase like a craving knife: "Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them more." At times we both were laughing so hard, all conversation ceased. I always left her feeling better than before I arrived, her vitality and good humor were so contagious.

Her beloved Jim passed away 22 years ago. She couldn't understand divorce because losing her husband had been so painful. Nancy once told me that for five years after he died, she wanted to die too, but when she didn't, she decided she might as well go on living. 

That she did, to the fullest, ten decades of indomitable determination to live each day as a quest. Like the Energizer bunny, she just kept going and going and going.

But in time, Nancy's body began to waver, then falter, then fail; even a lionheart loses its roar. 

A week ago, I visited her in a local hospice facility. Nancy's frail body was betraying her strong will. She still smiled, laughed, but her quick wit was dimming. She signed one last book during our final lunchtime visit. As I got up to leave, I reached out. She took my hand and clasping it with both of hers, looked deep into my eyes. And with a tone as tender as the moment behooved, she said, "Goodbye, love." 

We both knew it was just that. Goodbye.

To paraphrase the Belle of Amherst, "Because she did not stop for death, it kindly stopped for her, the carriage held but the two, and immortality." 

After a short illness, Nancy died last Sunday, June 30 just sixteen days after her 96th birthday. That's over 35,000 days on this earth and the people she touched are better for experience. (KTOS celebrated her birthday at Ijams just four weeks ago.)   

As a writer, you're taught to avoid clichés, nothing slows down a narrative like a worn out phrase. It's like the gritty build-up on the bottom of a snow ski. But in this case, I hope you forgive me. When God made Nancy, he broke the mold. 

I will miss, miss, miss her dearly.

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Audubon book review

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 The Long Goodbye

A new book traces one ornithologist's quixotic efforts to study and preserve the ivory-billed woodpecker

By Frank Graham Jr.

"They called and acted nervously when I approached," James Tanner writes of the ivory-billed woodpecker in his 400-plus-page travel journal in 1937. "Male whammed on stub two inches long, then flew a short distance, whammed and bammed. Female worked on a dead hackberry stub 25 feet high, 18 inches in diameter, mostly skinned and showed many [beetle] engraver burrows."

Tanner's journal is the chief source, the very substance, of the saddest book I have ever read about birds. Ghost Birds resembles the recollections and musings of a man at the bedside of a friend struggling against a fatal illness... fascinating in its detail of the day-to-day existence of the last known group of these magnificent birds, the book also records a dogged scientist's frustrating search through southern swamps for other ivory-bills."

For the rest of Frank Graham Jr.'s essay/review about my latest book Ghost Birds  that appears in the September/October issue of Audubon magazine click: Long Goodbye.

ghostly evening

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Ghost bird appears at Ijams Nature Center!

The highly acclaimed documentary Ghost Bird will be shown at Ijams Nature Center on Saturday, February 12 at 4 p.m.

Filmmaker Scott Crocker has turned the saga of the ivory-billed woodpecker into witty, wistful story that is fascinating to practically everyone. It’s been called a “cosmic lament for the forest primeval and man’s search for environmental redemption.

Is the Ghost Bird extinct or not? That is the question that remains unanswered.

I will also on hand with Nancy Tanner selling and signing copies of our book “Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-bill.”

I'll briefly discuss the differences between our book Ghost Birds (plural) and the film Ghost Bird (singular), similar names but each represent a different part of the ivory-bill story.

Admission for the movie is $5, but seating is limited, to reserve a chair (white with blue cushion) call 577-4717, ext. 10.

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where are my books?

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Being an author is an odd sort of avocation. You spend years and years, working in private: researching, reading, thinking, scribbling, marking through and scribbling yet again. And then, somehow, your babies are born. You often find yourself wondering: Where do they go? Have they found a good home? Or are they languishing in a used bookstore? Or, God forbid, a remainder bin, sold for 50 cents a pound. (An author's nightmare.)

To that end, if you have a copy of one of my books, send me a photo and sate my curiosity.

A second book has ended up in Louisiana, albeit may just be passing through. It's in the hands of Dan and Laurie Mooney, fellow KTOSers now traveling across the country, footloose and free of fancy.

Dan writes: "This historical marker is in Addis, La. Addis is just north of Plaquemine on LA 1 and is the plantation where my mother was raised. Her father was the 'overseer' for St. Delphine around 1915. He later became a game warden and was a game warden in the area in the late 1930s when Tanner came through looking for Ivorybills. Do Tanner's notes mention who he talked to at Piere Part? My maternal grandfather's name was Levert Henry Bird but he was called Pete. Just curious."

I'm not sure about an answer to Dan's question, I'll have to dig into Tanner's journal. But here are the Mooneys in Louisiana.

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animals today

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I will be interviewed live on the national radio program Animals Today Sunday, January 23 at 5 p.m. eastern. Broadcast on AM stations around the country, the program originates in Southern California. It is also streamed on their website.

The topic will be my book Ghost Birds, Jim Tanner, the ivory-billed woodpecker and animal extinction.

If you miss the show, the interview will be archived on the Animals Today website a few days after the broadcast.




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Tanner: memoriam

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Special note:

Dr. James T. Tanner, Jim, the protagonist in my book Ghost Birds, passed away on this date 20 years ago:

January 21, 1991.

Jim is still sadly missed, but by none more so than his wife Nancy.

The photo to the left was taken in 1937, in the Singer Tract while Jim was conducted his Cornell/Audubon field research of the ivory-billed woodpecker.


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ghost birds: out of cash

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"Because he was running out of cash, Jim left the swamp and drove west to Fort Myers. During his entire three-year journey through the South, his Audubon grant money was wired to him periodically as he traveled from place to place. On this occasion, however, the money had not arrived at Fort Myers, and Tanner found himself almost broke. He took a part-time job helping refurbish a motor yacht, scrapping barnacles off the hull."


Excerpt from Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1931-1941


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where are my books?

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Being an author is an odd odd sort of avocation. You spend years and years, working in private: researching, reading, thinking, scribbling, marking through and scribbling yet again. Staring into space. Scratching your head. Beating your head against the wall. And then, some how, your babies are born. You often find yourself wondering: Where do they go? Have they found a good home? Or are they languishing in a used bookstore? Or, God forbid, a remainder bin. (An author's nightmare.)

To that end, if you have a copy of one of my books, send me a photo and sate my curiosity.

Here's one that found its way to the Savannah in Tennessee.

Mike Martin from Savannah is a professional forester and has been a member of the Society of American Foresters since 1967. He worked with Dr. Geoff Hill as an information systems coordinator at the Choctawhatchee ivory-bill site and has also visited with Gene Sparling in Arkansas at the scene of the Gallagher/Harrison sighting.

Thanks, Mike.

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where are my books?

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Being an author is an odd odd sort of avocation. You spend years and years, working in private: researching, reading, thinking, scribbling, marking through and scribbling yet again. Comma in, comma out. Paragraph in, paragraph out.

Only your loved ones know the long hours of isolation And then, somehow, the gods smile on you and you finish and deliver your manuscript to the publisher. At that point, it no longer is a private affair, the pace quickens, there's editing, design, proof approvals, scheduling, deadlines, and before too long your books are out there, thousands of them, strewn about like autumn leaves in the wind.

You often find yourself wondering: Where do they go? Have they found a good home? Are they languishing in a used bookstore? (An author's nightmare.)

To that end, if you have a copy of one of my books, send me a photo and sate my curiosity. Here's one that found its way to the Big Apple, the city that never sleeps.



Bill Benish at the subway station very close to his apartment in uptown New York City. (This is very appropriate since in my book, Jim and Nancy Tanner saw the beginning of 1941 come in at Times Square watching the ball drop.)

Thanks, Bill.

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ghost birds: East Carroll Parish

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In Louisiana, north of the Singer Tract: 1938

"After his meal, it began to look like rain, so Jim hustled out to find his car not wanting to get it stuck in the mud yet again. He had just reached the road and the cabin of Fred Williams, when a heavy rain began to fall. Williams invited Tanner into his home until the shower passed, where Jim learned that the old-timer had not seen an ivory-bill in the area in 10 years. His story and the amount of cut over acreage confirmed what Jim was already sensing: if the upper reaches of the Tensas bottomland had once been home to the storied woodpeckers, they were now all gone. "


Excerpt from Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1931-1941


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book signing

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Saturday, Oct. 30, 2 p.m.

Carpe Librum Booksellers

5113 Kingston Pike

Knoxville, TN

I will be talking about and signing copies of Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1935–1941, which features a foreword by Nancy Tanner.

Ghost Birds published by UT Press. For more information about the book go to: Ghost Birds

Cover illustration by the author.

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you're invited

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Thursday, October 21, 6 pm.

Film: You are invited to the Knoxville Museum of Art for a screening of the award-winning documentary Ghost BIRD (singular) by Scott Crocker. The film is about the recent rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker in Arkansas.

Book Launch: Nancy Tanner and I will be at the event signing copies of our new book Ghost BIRDS. (Ours is plural, the titles similarity is coincidental.) Published by UT Press, our book is about the historic fieldwork and search for ivorybills conducted by Nancy's late husband James T. Tanner between 1935 and 1941. So both the film and the book are about the Lord God Bird but ours takes place over 70 years ago.

The event at KMA is co-presented by UT Press and the Tennessee Clean Water Network. For more info go to UT Press.

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ghost birds: review

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The reviewer writes:

“This is a long over due book about a man of amazing tenacity. The book tells the incredible story of James T. Tanner, the right man in the right place at the right time. Tanner, an undergrad student at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology was selected by the legendary Arthur Allen to join an expedition across America to record in sound and on film rare and endangered birds. Upon being shown Ivorybills in the Singer Tract of Northern Louisiana the expedition makes the first photos, movies and sound recording of this rare and endangered species.

“It was not soon after this expedition that Tanner was back in the Louisiana swamps under a grant from the National Association of Audubon Societies, studying ivorybills and working on his PhD. Tanner's four-year study is the first and only scientific study of Ivory-billed Woodpecker. The author, Stephens Lyn Bales did a superb job of telling the fascinating story of this iconic man. If you have an interest in the ivorybill or not, this is a must read book. Once I started reading I could not put it down. Bales words have a flow that keeps you mesmerized about the young James Tanner and his exploits throughout the south as he searches for the "Grail Bird.”

- By Bobby Harrison, The Ivory-billed Woodpecker Foundation

Ghost Birds published by UT Press. For more information go to:

Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1935-1941

Cover illustration by the author. Book available in the gift shop at Ijams Nature Center.

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ghost birds: woodpeckerness

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"Tanner immediately began a palmetto blind near the tree and settled in to watch the activity, making careful notes of all he saw. Throughout the day, the male and female returned to the tree with food for the young bird. From time to time Jim noted seeing the nestling stick its head out to look around; at times
it would exercise its “woodpeckerness,” using its bill to chip away at the lower edge of the hole, creating a noticeable notch."


Excerpt from Ghost Birds published by UT Press. For more information go to:

Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1935-1941

Cover illustration by the author. Book available in the gift shop at Ijams Nature Center.

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ghost birds: four dollar boat

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In Georgia on the Altamaha River:

"After buying a boat from another local woodsman, Jim made his first solo excursion into a southern swamp. His four-dollar purchase was flat-bottomed, narrow, and about fifteen feet long. For the next five days, he floated down the river, searching the section J. J. Brown had described. Using a paddle carved from a board, Tanner worked to stay in the middle of the river."


Excerpt from Ghost Birds. For more information go to:

Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1935-1941

Cover illustration by the author.


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ghost birds: kints

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"The swamp played tricks on them, ringing with echoes. Tanner heard the “hooting,” as Sutton beckoned him in his direction. Kuhn had heard a “kint” south of their location, toward Sharkey Road. Both pileated and red-bellied woodpeckers were calling, keeping the searchers on their toes, nerves on edge. J.J. suggested they walk slower, so as to hear any unfamiliar sound."


Excerpt from Ghost Birds. For more information go to:

Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1935-1941 

Cover illustration by the author, that would be me. 


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ghost birds: swampers

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"From Louisiana to South Carolina, Jim had met dozens of swampers in the past year. They were good folks, resourceful and helpful if your car was stuck in the mud, but for them money was hard to come by. Mostly they earned a living by gleaning whatever they could from the watery woods. They farmed, hunted, fished, and even poached if they had to. Naturally, their curiosity about the big woodpeckers centered on monetary value."


Excerpt from Ghost Birds. For more information go to:

Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1935-1941 Cover illustration by the author.


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ghost birds: Santee Bottoms

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Searching the Santee Bottoms:

“Most of the swamp was about ankle-deep,” Tanner wrote. “The deepest creek I waded was half-way up my thighs. None of the deeper creeks were long. Here and there were low and small ridges, carrying sweet gum, a little laurel oak, etc. Bird life was scarce.”


Excerpt from Ghost Birds to be published this month. For more information go to:

Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1935-1941 Cover illustration by the author.

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ghost birds: Hunter's Bend

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Searching Hunter’s Bend:

“In the afternoon, we walked over to Blue Lake,” wrote Tanner. “The cutover country is the darndest place to get thru, tree-tops in every direction, catroads [meandering trails] winding around, every depression full of water, and where a cat-road crossed water was a boggy trough.”

"Walking through this section was a slow, laborious trek. If an ivory-bill flew over, it would be nearly impossible to follow."



Excerpt from Ghost Birds to be published this month. For more information go to:

Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1935-1941 Cover illustration by the author.


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