On Fri, 12 Apr 1996, William H. Lawrence wrote:

> i'll whisper from now on michael k

Ahhh. Much easier on the ears this way.

> i watched a golf ball hit an eastern meadow lark flying by killing the
> bird. the collision took place 200'+ out and over 20' up. the event took
> place at silver springs md in the late '20's.

On many lists of ways birds die, "hit by golf ball" is listed, usually as
part of a "miscellaneous" category. I don't think it really happens as
often as that would imply, but it's one of the more obvious ways (to
humans) that a bird can snuff it, so few go unrecorded, probably.

On the other side of the coin, I remember reading a bit piece in a
newspaper about a driving range on the east coast that had to be closed
because of gulls. The gulls would pick up the balls off the grass and
drop them from thirty feet overhead onto the only hard surface around,
which happened to be the cement tee platforms the golfers were using. If
you've frequented the mid-Atlantic coastal states, you've probably seen
the little almost spherical clams they have there. Not hard to figure out
what was going through the gulls heads (at least until the "clams" bounced
back up 25 feet).

Chris Hill
Everett, WA
cehill at u.washington.edu