[at-l] birds, Slate

[Frank Looper]

I saw a flock of birds that I couldn't identify. Quiet, slightly
smaller than gulls, bright white with pale gray tips and hovered in
the breeze. They were at the top of Lake Jocassee. Any ideas?

On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 1:44 PM, RockDancer <rockdancer97 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Last Friday’s article in Slate might appeal to those who are looking at
> birds these days. Seems it’s becoming a vogue thing for the aging
> population, even sparking an upcoming Steve Martin movie. See
> http://www.slate.com/id/2280960 for the whole article, here’s the lead
> paragraph:
>
>
>
> “For a few days this month, America became a nation of bird-watchers. More
> than 3,000 dead black birds started raining from the sky shortly before the
> new year broke in Beebe, Ark., prompting widespread concern about ecological
> disaster, government conspiracy, and the Rapture. This was not the first
> time feathered creatures landed recently in public life. Birding, these
> days, is everywhere. In Jonathan Franzen's best-selling novel, Freedom,
> paterfamilias Walter Berglund becomes a bird fanatic to conjure meaning in
> his drifting life. (Freedom's cover—maybe you have seen it?—sports a large,
> teed-off-looking cerulean warbler.) Annie Proulx's new memoir, Bird Cloud,
> flatlines "into long descriptions of bird watching," wrote the critic Dwight
> Garner. These next months, meanwhile, Princeton will publish three separate
> bird guides; Steve Martin will star in a screen version of The Big Year (a
> tale of pan-continental birding); and the nation's leading bird-art
> exhibition will turn 35. If American life is, as some people like to say, a
> tree of many branches, it is starting to seem a good idea not to stand
> beneath it.”
>
>
>
> My recent life birds include hybrids of Mallard Ducks crossed with Black
> Duck, Northern Pintail and Gadwall. Canada Geese hybrids with Domestic
> Goose, Greater White-fronted Goose and possible Swan. The big sighting was
> the Pink-footed Goose, only the 3rd bird seen in MA historical records! All
> seen since Thanksgiving .
>
>
>
> --RockDancer
>
> (Arthur Gaudet)
>
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