Word: terns
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Birds like the arctic tern and the endangered Kittlitz's murrelet can be seen skimming the astonishingly beautiful Alaskan coastline while sea otters backstroke through the cold, clear waters of the Sound. It is a remarkable turnaround since the Exxon spill, the worst man-made environmental disaster in U.S. history - the immediate shock of which killed hundreds of thousands of shorebirds that made their home in the Sound along with sea otters that choked on the crude. Over the long term, populations of orcas, killer whales, herring and other species would be injured by the accident. (Read "Remembering the Lessons...
...couple is interrupted by the appearance of two visitors from the sea: reptiles, the first in their class to reach land. Contact, of an edgily entertaining sort, ensues. It's a treat to see the pitch-perfect work of two grand troupers: Frances Sternhagen, hopping about like a perky tern, and George Grizzard (Nick in the original 1962 production of Virginia Woolf), who's equally convincing as either a cranky-adorable coot or a statesmen to the lizard world. As seascapes should be, this one is sunny and genial - the lightest of Albee's plays, by which I mean...
...shooting, when Reagan was incapacitated for some five hours. The amendment allows a transfer of power when the President is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office." It outlines two procedures for doing this. The first calls for the President to write to the president pro tern of the Senate and the Speaker of the House declaring his incapacity, thereby giving the powers of his office to the Vice President on a temporary basis. Later the President may notify the leaders of Congress when he is able to resume his duties. The second procedure, which...
...science is straightforward. Two years ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a "biological opinion," urging the Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates the water, to change the way it runs the dams, warning that the steady flow threatens three endangered species: the piping plover, least tern and pallid sturgeon, a long-snouted behemoth that looks like a refugee from the Jurassic period. A higher spring flow would signal the sturgeon to spawn and would provide food; the piping plover would find hospitable nesting ground on sandbars carved out by the rushing current. A summer drawdown would create shallows...
...strewn channels of the Yellow Water wetlands in the tropical Top End of the Australian outback. "Brolga on the left," the tour guide announces. All eyes swivel left, toward the graceful gray crane. Cameras click. "Egret just ahead," he calls. More craning (of necks) and pointing of cameras. "Darter, tern, black-necked stork!" The birders in the group are in a state of near ecstasy. The rest of us are biding our time. Ten minutes later we round a corner and the collective cry goes up: "Crocodile!" There's a stampede as everyone rushes to the side of the boat...