Hope Is the Thing With Feathers

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 28 FEB 2000

Even readers with no special interest in birds will be caught up in this marvelous book, a deeply moving cautionary tale about how we have systematically diminished the planet. In recounting the histories of six extinct North American birds, along with stories of the people who killed them off and those who tried to save them, Cokinos, a professor of English at Kansas State University, transforms each extinction into a deeply disturbing tragedy--both for the species itself, and for human civilization. Relentless, wanton hunting, more than ecosystem pressures, obliterated Cokinos's feathered protagonists, including the Carolina Parakeet, which once colored the skies with its green, yellow and reddish-orange plumage; the hardy Passenger Pigeon, flying for hours at a time in endless flocks before it vanished around 1900; the exquisite Labrador Duck; and the Heath Hen, daily fare for the Pilgrims, a holdout on Martha's Vineyard until 1932. Cokinos seamlessly weaves together priceless anecdotes, historical detective work, birders' reports, natural histories of the vanished species and his travel notes ranging from the Louisiana bayous to the steep-cliffed Bird Rock islets in the St. Lawrence Gulf, once the nesting ground of the extinct Great Auk. We also meet memorable humans like wildlife artist Don Eckelberry, who in 1944 made the last authenticated sighting of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker as its forest was being decimated. Cokinos weighs the "fantastically remote" possibility of using DNA cloned from extinct birds to resurrect these vanished species, but the real hope engendered by this extraordinary saga--beautifully illustrated with photographs, engravings, paintings and memorabilia--lies in its insistent plea to restore ecological sanity. will be published on March 24, the 100th anniversary of the shooting of the last documented wild Passenger Pigeon.