Word: gooney
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...shapes. A splendid example of this rara avis is Charles Orlando Porter, 40, Democratic Congressman from Oregon's Fourth District, who returned last week from a fact-finding flight through the islands along the Asian littoral, a flight that created more embarrassment and consternation than a plague of gooney birds...
...Navy will never be successful in its attempt to move the albatross from Midway Island [Oct. 26]. I have helped some of these gooney birds to build their nests, and the aid was accepted gracefully, but the bird selects the site. Once I moved a nest, egg and all, to a new site only three feet distant; the bird was thoroughly confused and went about building a new nest on the original site...
...great birds (wingspan: about 7 ft.) go through such distressingly gooney antics that Navymen long ago dubbed them gooney birds. Among other things, they need large, clear areas to take off and land, and they find airports ideal. The friendly gooney birds lay their big eggs on or near the runways, rise in clouds as if to welcome planes on landing or to see them off on takeoffs. Often they fly smack into an airborne craft. They have dived into propellers, smashed against expensive radomes, causing about $300,000 damage a year. Far worse is the ever-present danger that...
...Navy's latest proposed stratagem is simple: a bash on the head for every gooney. But chances are this plan will never really get off the ground. First of all, it will take the Navy at least five years to purge the birds: young gooneys leave Midway shortly after birth to wander, return only at the age of five. Furthermore, back in the U.S., outraged conservationists have organized a concerted protest to Congress against the projected slaughter...
...soothe man and bird alike, the Navy is creating an airport for albatrosses on the nearby, nonstrategic island of Kure, hopes to build up the small albatross population there (current count: 700). Fortnight ago Navy bulldozers cut a series of 50-ft. swaths through the brush to make special gooney runways. But last week, at the peak of their mating season, the gooneys again defied the U.S. Navy. As ornithologists had predicted, not one winged off to the new, man-made sanctuary...