'Pigeon' author Joel Greenberg speaks at Hummingbird Festival

Author Joel Greenberg at the Pigeon Forge entrance to the national park. Photo by Paul James. 

Ijams was fortunate to have naturalist and author Joel Greenberg speak at last Saturday's fourth annual The Wonder of Hummingbird Festival held at the Nature Center.

The event is a fundraiser for both Ijams and the Knoxville Chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society. An estimated 1400-plus attended the day-long event.

Greenberg spoke about the now extinct passenger pigeon, the subject of his most recent book A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction published this year by Bloomsbury.

Martha Ijams with passenger pigeon
specimen now at Sugarlands

Yesterday, Greenberg and Ijams' Executive Director Paul James both spoke at the Sugarlands Visitor Center Theater in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Their joint talk was billed as The Echoes of their Wings: The Life and Legacy of the Passenger Pigeon. Greenberg told the story of what was once the most abundant bird in North America. Paul told the story of the life and work of H.P. Ijams, who donated the mounted passenger pigeon specimen now on display in the Sugarlands museum.

On the way, the two "pigeon" guys drove through Pigeon Forge, the largest city in the country named in honor of the now lost species. 

Thank you, Joel for visiting East Tennessee!

- Stephen Lyn Bales