Famed birder speaks at Camp Sherman festival

Nancy Tanner is the last person alive to have seen an Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

The Woodpecker Wonderland Festival was honored to have Tanner as their keynote speaker last weekend.

Tanner met her husband James T. Tanner while she was teaching at Tennessee State College. Her then-future husband was a Commander in the Navy and was getting his Ph.D at Cornell. An ornithologist, he also started the first department of ecology in the 1940s.

Tanner recalls the days she and her husband trekked through Arkansas and the Florida panhandle observing the Ivory-billed.

"All the people who saw the Ivory-bill are no longer living. So my claim to fame is that I haven't actually died yet," she told a rapt audience of birders.

The Ivory-bill is the largest woodpecker in the United States being about 20 inches long with an approximate 30-inch wingspan. It weighs about 20 ounces. The last official sighting of an Ivory-bill was in 1944.

Tanner recalled hearing the last lone female calling out to a silent response. There were no other Ivory-bills to hear her call.She brought slides taken in the '40s showing Ivory-bill habitat with views of water and cypress trees. Sewing machine maker Singer needed wood for their sewing machine cabinets, and the trees were cut.

Ivory-bills lost their only means of survival, newly dead trees to use as a source for grubs. Soybean fields paint a sharp contrast to groves where trees once stood.

James Tanner testified before Congress hoping to preserve the habitat, but the lumber company wouldn't sell.

"People were not as focused on conservation in those days," Tanner explained.

"Richard Pough was so upset he said he wanted to do something to save land," Tanner said.

He later started the Nature Conservancy. Pough was also the author of Audubon bird guides.

"Roger Tory Peterson (writer of numerous field guides) said seeing the Ivory-bill was the biggest thrill of his life," Tanner noted.

Tanner talked about the heavy camera equipment used in the '30s and '40s. Equipment was carried several miles into the forest, through dense swamps, climbing over tree roots, poison ivy, through mud, bad weather, and bugs.

"I was 23 at the time," she said, "so it was a lot easier. It's amazing what you'll do for love when you're that age." Since 2002 several people have claimed to have seen Ivory-bills, but have provided neither a picture nor a body as the necessary proof. To date their claims are unsubstantiated.

James Tanner wrote a book titled "The Ivory-billed Woodpecker." He died in 1991.