an ivory-billed woodpecker in 1940s virginia?
"What follows is how this account was relayed to me, preserved in a first-person narrative form as closely as possible to the way the story has been told over the years. I spent a good deal of time in Virginia Beach in the late 1940s, staying there regularly while helping a friend who was a local entomologist. He had an eye for detail, and so did I. We were often out early after storms because the coastal weather had a way of throwing all sorts of specimens into the open. Heavy winds and pounding rain would push insects, debris, and other oddities right up against the steps and edges of the motel where we stayed. It was not a fine place by any means. It was the kind of place people passed through, the kind of place that always seemed a little grimy, a little temporary, a little off. But the setting was productive for collecting. During that period, the two of us began observing a pair of woodpeckers fairly regularly. They were not birds you expected to see casually. E...