HAPPY NEW YEAR

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> From: Michael Price <mprice at mindlink.bc.ca>
> To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
> Subject: Re: Birds and wood...
> Date: Wednesday, December 31, 1997 7:00 PM
>
> Hi Tweets,
>
> Susan L. Collicott writes:
>
> (snip)
> >We used osage orange
> >in exhibits. It was the only wood that lasted more than a few days on
the
> >macaws' island: their sharp beaks whittled oak as fast as balsa wood.
> >It's hell on saws though...
>
> Another unbelievably tough, heavy wood is larch larix sp. On a bird
survey
> in the southern Interior of BC a few years ago, some of my study plots
were
> in old-growth mountain larch L. occidentalis forest. The wood is so dense

> and iron-hard that a 100+ meter (300+ ft) tree would typically be no much

> more than one meter (3 ft) in diameter for most of its height, and
totally
> rigid. When the wind blew hard the doug-firs and redcedars might bend,
but
> the larch moved back and forth straight and inflexible as a ruler.
Because
> of the larch wood's imperviousness, woodpeckers can't bore holes in it,
nor
> can they find nesting cavities in it. About all that drilling
insectivores
> can do with a larch is sit in it.
>
> Michael Price A brave world, Sir,
> Vancouver BC Canada full of religion, knavery and change;
> mprice at mindlink.net we shall shortly see better days.
> Aphra Behn (1640-1689)