Publication Items

 THE GRAIL BIRD: HOT ON THE TRAIL OF THE IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER 
By Tim Gallagher 
Houghton Mifflin Company, $25

Reviewed by CHRISTINE HEINRICHS
The announcement of a confirmed sighting of the ivorybilled woodpecker in April 2005 was greeted like a confirmed extraterrestrial alien sighting. It was astonishing, contrary to accepted general wisdom, breathtaking.

 By KATINA GAUDET 

"We have a different fear of hurricanes."

My friend Yasmin was trying to rationalize her fearlessness in the face of an imposing Hurricane Katrina, expected to make landfall near New Orleans the next day, from her first-floor Uptown apartment.

But I was having difficulty, although safe in a hotel room near Memphis. I was frantic, yelling into the phone at Yasmin, "You cannot stay there."

 AMERICA'S WETLAND: LOUISIANA'S VANISHING COAST
 Photographs by Bevil Knapp, text by Mike Dunne Louisiana State 
University Press, $39.95