Word: birde
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Emery's trouble was that as editor of the monthly Records of New England Birds and secretary of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, she had to sped here mornings answering telephone calls from bird lovers on the whereabouts of their favorite birds. This took also of time and Mrs. Exery was a busy woman. In desperation, and on the advice of a friend, she had the telephone company install its most up-to-date mechanical secretary. All it did was answer the phone and deliver a recording of Mrs. Emery's voice. "This is the voice of Audubon," the record said...
...South Pacific's frigate birds have not the high standards of U.S. postmen through storm and sleet and snow and dark of night. But, in their slapdash way, the frigate birds do pretty well. For centuries, the islanders in France's remote Tuamotu archipelago have used the frigate bird to carry messages from island to island, putting their faith in the tropical laziness that prompts the birds to fly no farther than the nearest island. If the mail is not always delivered on time and seldom with any privacy, at least it costs nothing and there...
Content with this system, a native of Raraka recently caught a frigate bird and fastened to his wing a note enclosing 20 francs for a friend on nearby Katiu. True to his proud tradition, the frigate took off, but in the wrong direction. Days later, just as the natives were coming out of church, he swooped into a three-point landing on New Zealand's Rakahanga island, a full 1,000 miles away. A government clerk spotted the note clipped to the wing, and relieved the errant frigate of his burden. It took a telegram, many more days...
Novelist John P. Marquand's late George Apley, a dedicated Bostonian who liked to watch birds and deplored progress, never had it like this. Beginning last week Boston's bird watchers could get a bulletin on what to look for simply by dialing Kenmore 6-4050. Mrs. Ruth P. Emery, co-editor of Records of New England Birds, asked the telephone company to install an answering machine beside her desk. A recording of the current bulletin, previously made by her, goes over the wire when a call comes in. A tape recorder takes down incoming information...
...Ernest Hemingway, when he is writing, every day begins in that private world. As early as 5:30 in the morning, before any but some gabby bantams, a few insomniac cats and a cantankerous bird called "The Bitchy Owl" are awake, he goes to work in the big main bedroom of his villa. He writes standing up at the mantelpiece, using pencil for narrative and description, a typewriter for dialogue "in order to keep...