Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Otus the Head Cat
Brinkley is bracing for influx of twitchers.
Dear Otus,
After 30 years in the sport, I almost gave up birding after spending a small fortune during the great ivory-billed woodpecker debacle in the Big Woods from 2004 to 2009. I can’t tell you how many times we tramped through that swamp looking for the thing.
There are very few birds left on my bucket list, but I can die happy now that I’ve checked off the ruffled-breasted dog tick thrush, thought to be extinct since 1944.
And the odd thing was, it came to me! Or rather my dog, Goober. I’ve posted the photo on the Audubon Arkansas website and here it is so you can spread the joy. Stu Preissler, DeValls Bluff
Dear Stu,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you and I include your photo with today’s column.
Brace yourself. As soon as word spreads that a Cotidiana vilescunt has managed to survive in the murky sloughs of the Dagmar Wildlife Management Area near Brinkley, a repeat of the ivory-billed phenomenon will no doubt take place.
Brinkley will likely become the new twitching capital of the world.
I understand there are already plans for a specialty license plate featuring the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission ruffle-breasted dog tick thrush design. Demand for the current ivory-billed woodpecker design has understandably dropped to near zero in recent years.
Stephanie, my Audubon source, informs me that a dedicated cadre of binoculartoting, wader-wearing birders has been quietly searching for the thrush for 40 years. The last verified specimen was hit by a 1939 International Harvester D2 pickup just outside Holly Grove on Aug. 14, 1944. Now, thanks to Goober, the birds seem to be back.
The speckled rust- and slate-colored bird was once a common sight in eastern Arkansas perched symbiotically atop dogs like cattle egrets on cows or yellow-billed oxpeckers on rhinos. However, because their diet consisted primarily of ticks, mites and other ectoparasites, the thrushes preferred hunting dogs fresh from the state’s infamous tickinfested deer woods.
The proliferation of DDTinfused flea collars in the early ’40s spelled rapid doom for the thrush. Having been deprived of their natural food source, the birds quickly disappeared.
For the record, DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) has been banned in the United States since 1972, but it took the near loss of the bald eagle to get that done.
A worldwide ban on DDT agricultural use was formalized under the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and likely played a part in the 2012 return of the European subspecies, known in its native France as the “oiseau brun laid.”
It’s interesting to note, Stu, that you may not have been the first to spot the bird. Kenny Bostick of DeWitt attempted to report one in 2013, but lacked photographic proof and was held up to public ridicule in the Letters to the Editor section of Bird Watching magazine.
Afterward, Bostick refused interviews, saying, “I got tired of being lumped in with alien abduction wackos and Sasquatch spotters. I didn’t want to be associated with Loch Ness monster nutcases or those who’ve seen chupacabras, snallygasters, the Gurdon light or Elvis.”
I can only imagine the satisfaction Bostick must feel now that the effete birders have to eat crow (Corvus verbamanducans).
“Unless his bird spontaneously appeared out of thin air,” Bostick said in a Friday tweet, “it had to have a mama and daddy. I guess one of them’s what I saw.”
For those planning a trip to spot the bird, Google has excellent closeup photos of a pristine specimen. It’s 4 inches long with a wingspan of 8 inches. The bird fell from its nest and was raised in captivity in Tupelo, Miss., in the 1920s. It is mounted on display atop a stuffed golden retriever in the Ronald and Christina Gidwitz Hall of Birds in the Field Museum on Natural History in Chicago.
As with most rare birds, the ruffle-breasted dog tick thrush will most likely be heard before it is seen. Listen for the bird’s distinctive acoustic signature that mimics the first four notes of whistling “Dixie” and is usually repeated three to four times.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you to report all sightings on the Game and Fish website, agfc.com.