Word: birdness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...area. For one, the island's famous pink beaches are now marred by traces of tar. Another sign shows up in studies made by David Wingate, a government conservationist. In 1968, he found oil clotting the underfeathers of 1 in every 100 longtails, a graceful sea bird that breeds in Bermuda. This year the ratio rose to 1 in 4. Wingate believes that floating particles of tar-perhaps caused by tankers pumping, out their tanks, smear the birds as they sit on the water. Since longtails die if oil sticks to their wings or is eaten in preening, their...
...Wingate also reports a bright spot amid the goo. The Bermuda cahow, a rare marine bird supposedly doomed by pesticides flushed into the ocean, is apparently staging a comeback. This year the world's last 24 pairs of cahows have produced twelve healthy chicks. A likely reason, Wingate thinks, might be that the rising tide of floating tar is at least temporarily absorbing the harmful pesticides...
...Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. As a minor park employee 18 years ago, Johnson was appalled at New York City's use of Jamaica Bay as a garbage dump and worked to lessen the visual pollution by planting native shrubs, bushes and trees. Now one of the major bird-watching locations in Eastern North America, the refuge has been proposed as the site of a federal recreation area. Even the pollution of the Hudson River is reversible, he says; it will purify itself naturally if man will only stop using it as a refuse dump...
...L.B.J.'s penchant for record keeping is not limited to the stuff of archives: the library also houses an exact replica of the Oval Office, complete with the three-set television console, and bronze-backed display cases containing the Johnson daughters' wedding dresses. Lady Bird Johnson, who chose the library site, and has been frequently seen directing its construction over the past five years, is behind some of the more personal touches. Says she: "Visitors want to sniff the presidency, to see firsthand the real belongings that were part of the center of power...
...sowed me oats in nine months. I'm 22 years old, and at my age I need me oats," says one angry veteran of Gan. "I'll be married three months after I get off this island. I'm ripe for picking by the first bird who comes along." Others haunt the airport lounge in the hope that the next load of passengers in transit will include a girl they can talk to-or even just look at. Most flights passing through carry the R.A.F. equivalent of a stewardess, known technically as a loadmaster or quartermaster...