I’ve been suffering from one of those arcane diseases the cure for which would qualify, according to the Wikipedia list, as a “Holy Grail”: namely, the common cold. Illness alone could explain my prolonged absence from the fascinating world of Nennius. Meanwhile, while I was wallowing in my misery, somebody pointed out to me a book called The Grail Bird by Tim Gallager, which is about the search for the ivory-billed woodpecker.
If you’ve ever seen a pileated woodpecker, you have some idea of what a magnificent bird the larger and showier ivory-billed must be. When I was a boy, I used to imagine myself finding the last stand of the ivory-billed woodpeckers; the fact that I lived inside the Beltway in the suburbs of Washington didn’t discourage me at all. (After all, we had pileated woodpeckers coming through our woods often enough, so what was to prevent an ivory-billed from moving in?)
So I can certainly see why North American birdwatchers would consider the ivory-billed woodpecker the Holy Grail of birdwatching, and I’m delighted to add the bird to my collection of Holy-Grails-of.
