-- In Other News --

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Dr. Irene Pepperberg's 'memoir' of her life with Alex the African Grey Parrot, "Alex and Me,"is now out in bookstores.

2008-09 Duck Stamps available for purchase here.

Taking note of the near insurmountable travails that will face the next U.S. President (passed along from the current wretched Administration), columnist Hal Crowther concludes a recent essay, simply and aptly stating, "God help Barack Obama if he wins the election. God help us all if he loses."

And I'll end with the same verbatim quotes from T. Gilbert Pearson, one of America's premier 20th century naturalists/ornithologists, that I used in a blog post here exactly one year ago today:

"The supreme moment of my life as a bird student came in May, 1932, when in a great primeval forest in northern Louisiana, I saw, for the first time, a living ivory-billed woodpecker... The ivory-bill is decidedly larger than the pileated, and this difference in size is very apparent, as we had ample opportunity to observe, when by chance birds of both species fed at the same time on a tall decayed stump within 80 feet of our hiding place."

"The reduction in abundance in this species is due most probably to persecution by man, as the species has been shot relentlessly without particular cause except curiosity and a desire for the feathers or beaks."

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