Having missed their opportunity 9m years earlier, man's ancestors and their kin now grabbed it, moving into the niches vacated by their recently exterminated Cousins.
But as the big woods of the Mississippi Delta were chopped down, the woodpecker-with its distinctive tooting call and double knock-was slowly exterminated.
Not merely a means for the satisfaction of human desires, nor a mere nuisanceto be exterminated, this tiny creature possesses the same dignity that anyconscious being possesses.
