On Fri, 19 Apr 1996, Michael Donahue wrote:
> a pillow. I threw a couple of handfuls of the feathers out on the
> lawn, and within
> a few hours had barn and violet-green swallows collecting the feathers
> to line their nests. What's really interesting is that I saw a pair of

I used to work on a field crew in northern Alaska, and the main duty was
to locate and monitor nesting birds. One of the most common breeders up
there was Lapland Longspur. And the best way to find their nest was to
throw a few downy feathers upwind of them. If you 'cast' your lure
correctly, and it landed near the birds, they would more often than not
pick up the feather and take it straight to their nest. Boom, nest found.
Ptarmigan down feathers worked best.

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Michael R. Smith
Univ. of Washington, Seattle
whimbrel at u.washington.edu
http://salmo.cqs.washington.edu/~wagap/mike.html