Word: ornithologist
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...find a bird that cannot be officially listed. Last winter Marsh and other top birders went to Charleston, S.C., to see a rare bird, said to be a gray-headed gull but that could be ruled a hybrid. "It's always a crapshoot," says Paul Sykes, a Georgia ornithologist. "The bird can also leave just before you get there. That's why we try to get there as quickly...
What accounts for such a fast-rising crusade against an activity that was once considered sophisticated and until recently had at least been politely tolerated? One thing that happened was that Betty Carnes, an ornithologist, returned home from a 1969 expedition and found that her best friend, a 29- year-old mother of two, was dying of lung cancer. Her last request to Carnes was to "try to make people aware of the dangers of smoking." Carnes helped persuade the commercial air carriers to begin segregating smokers in the early '70s. In 1973 she spearheaded a movement that prodded...
...Wildlife Service acknowledges these drawbacks but feels that its decision to try to breed captive condors offers the only hope for survival of the species. Arthur Risser, an ornithologist at the San Diego Zoo, agrees: "We can't compromise when they're so close to extinction...
...Ornithologist ROGER TORY PETERSON at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, Pa.: "Many people go through life as though they are wearing blinders or are sleepwalking. Their eyes are open, yet they may see nothing of their wild associates on this planet. Their ears, attuned to motor cars and traffic, seldom catch the music of nature -- the singing of birds, frogs or crickets -- or the wind. These people are biologically illiterate -- environmentally illiterate -- and yet they may fancy themselves well informed, perhaps sophisticated. They may know business trends or politics, yet haven't the faintest idea of what makes the natural world...
...rats, flies, mosquitoes and, especially, sparrows, which he said consumed too much of the nation's farm crops. Entire villages took to the road, yelling lustily, banging on pots, pans and gongs, and lighting firecrackers; the sparrows were frightened from their roosts and not allowed to realight. Recalls Chinese Ornithologist Tao Yaokuang, who was forced to take part in the program: "The idea was to harass them so they would be on their wings the whole day till they literally dropped dead." Sparrows were not the only birds to perish in the melee. Cranes, ibis and eagles, among others, were...