{"product_id":"0850604004047","title":"Ghost Bird","description":"It is estimated that between 50 and 70 million Americans pursue bird watching as a hobby, and most of them are people who thrive on the prospect of finding a specimen they haven't seen before. In February 2004, a birder kayaking in an Arkansas swamp videotaped what he believed was a remarkable find -- an ivory-billed woodpecker, a large and impressive creature that was believed to have been extinct for half a century after unregulated clear-cutting of forests destroyed its habitat. The sighting was major news among avian researchers, and Cornell University's Ornithology Lab sent a team to Arkansas in hopes of finding a living ivory-billed woodpecker. Hundreds of bird watchers followed them to Brinkley, AR, in hopes of seeing the great bird themselves, and in a town that had been caught in an economic tailspin, the appearance of the woodpecker seemed like a stroke of remarkable good luck. Soon local entrepreneurs were opening gift shops and motels to take advantage of the influx of birders, and a local barber even devised a \"woodpecker haircut.\" But amidst the excitement came a number of researchers who said that they had little hard evidence that what had been sighted was in fact an ivory-billed woodpecker, leading to a contentious debate among bird fanciers and folks in Brinkley who didn't want to lose their windfall. Filmmaker Scott Crocker takes an in-depth look at the sudden reappearance of the ivory-billed woodpecker and its many consequences in the documentary Ghost Bird, which was an official selection at the 2009 Hot Docs International Film Festival.","brand":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47089017651440,"sku":"0850604004047","price":29.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/0850604004047_p0.jpg?v=1763880745","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/0850604004047","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}