Word: birdness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Local ornithologists last night blamed the recent unseasonable weather for the sudden disappearance of the Bow Street Aviary's prize specimen. Treskiornia Aetheopia, the Sacred Ibis. The bird, distinguished by its dull metallic green plumage with irregular white streaks, left its perch stop a well-known society...
With the warmer spring weather, and with the northward migration of millions of birds, two of TIME'S writers are beginning to hear more questions about their favorite spare-time activity-prowling the woods and fields looking at birds, counting them, imitating their calls and studying their habits. For them it is an all-weather, year-round pastime which calls for old clothes, field glasses and an abundant knowledge of bird lore. They know, for instance, that a robin sings, not because he is happy, but because he has just staked out a claim to a clump of trees...
Both Cant and Daniels are members of the Urner Ornithological Club in New Jersey. Cant, who was president of the club for two years, credits the late Charles Anderson Urner, for whom the club is named, for bringing him "out of the dickey-bird stage." Cant has never totaled the birds he has seen on four continents and dozens of Pacific islands, but he was once a member of a party that sighted the only western grebe ever seen in New Jersey. Daniels has a "life list" of some 800 different species. They include about 100 he has seen...
Cant, who is now training one of his two sons in the sport, has also organized an "area count" in the national Christmas census of birds-a tabulation of the numbers and kinds of birds in various areas in early winter. A similar count will be made next month. Last year Cant, Daniels and James Baird, a graduate student in ornithology at Rutgers University, set out to break the record of 173 species of birds seen in one 24-hr, period in New Jersey. They found 169, ran out of time. They tried again, and this time they ran into...
...hazards of birding are not confined to such unexpected brushes with the law. Daniels and Baird once saw the only spurred towhee ever identified on the East Coast. To pin down the discovery, Baird got out his .410-gauge shotgun. Daniels worked around to the other side of the bird, moving it closer to Baird, but was obscured from Baird by the foliage. Finally Baird said he was going to shoot. A faithful birder to the end, Daniels covered his face with gloved hands, bravely replied: "Go ahead." Daniels was peppered with fine dust shot, but the towhee got away...