Hi Chatters, Tweeters, and Calbirders,

Under my CNN personal news service on Birding and "Bird Watching" I found the
following story: Again, as a thank you to CNN for staying with this story, I
will plug their website. Anyone can go to the site and set up their own news
clipping service, it is free. Go to http://www.cnn.com and page down the main
page almost to the end and you will see the hot key that will take you to the
personalizing section of CNN. Anybody that has trouble please contact me and
I will gladly help you.

<<Hostages, Schmostages _ Back to the Birds!

AP
30-APR-98

NEW YORK (AP) The whistle of the rare cundinamarca antpitta in a Colombian
jungle led Peter Shen into the arms of rebels who held him hostage for more
than a month.

A week ago, he dodged mortar fire to get out alive. And then Shen went right
back to what landed him in hot water in the first place: Bird-watching.

The danger, after all, comes with the territory. "Birding is worth it," said
Shen as he crept around his old haunt Central Park with another former
hostage, Tom Fiore. "This particular experience wasn't worth it, but it's
worthwhile going and exploring the world and taking calculated risks."

Colombia is certainly that. Few countries have more bird species including the
earthbound antpitta, found only southeast of Bogota but it also has the
world's highest kidnapping rate, with an average of four abductions every day.

Shen, Fiore and two other Americans were on a bird-watching expedition when
they were abducted March 23 by the Revolutionary Armed Forces, the nation's
largest and most powerful rebel band.

Fiore, a 42-year-old bicycle repairman from New York City, managed to escape
10 days later, covered with mud but unharmed after a seven-hour jungle walk
from the rebel camp.

Louise Augustine, a 63-year-old former nun from Chillicothe, Ill., was
released Friday. Shen and Todd Mark, a 32-year-old flight attendant from
Houston, were freed the next day. Another man had been released much earlier.

Bird-watchers across the United States have showered Shen with champagne,
balloons, cards and hundreds of e-mail messages since he came home on Sunday.
The 35-year-old cell biologist is already planning his next trip Brazil
following trips to Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.

That doesn't mean he's forgotten his ordeal. And Shen said seven other
hostages, including an American and a German living in Colombia, remain in the
camp.

"There isn't a moment I'm not haunted by the thought of them," Shen said. "We
became very close. We were hostages together, and negotiations are very
delicate. When we were there we were very uncertain about our fate."

Shen said he and his fellow birders devised a strategy. They would talk to
their captors "about birds and birding until we just bored them out of their
minds."

"When we were walking with them, we told them the species and genus of every
bird we passed. We told them the birds' behavior," he said.

After Shen and Mark were released, they still faced an hour's walk and were
caught in the crossfire between rebels and the army before they reached Red
Cross officials.

"Three hours after I arrived back in New York I was here in the park, birding.
I just couldn't stay away," said Fiore, who arrives at the park at dawn to go
birding at least twice a week.

On Wednesday, the two birders were looking for Blackburnian warblers.

As they peered through binoculars and listened for northern parulas, black-
throated blue warblers and Louisiana water thrushes, fellow bird enthusiasts
soft-spoken men and women with backpacks and binoculars wandered through
bushes and under trees to shake their hands, welcome them home and talk about
birds.

Suddenly, Shen spotted Fiore's parents, also looking for birds. "Oh wow, this
is the best sighting of the morning!" Shen said with a smile.

One thing after so many nights in the jungle, did the birders ever spot the
antpitta?

"I think we did. I'm pretty sure we did. We heard something very much like
it," Shen said, his eyes alight. "We obtained a tape of a cundinamarca
antpitta whistle and we're going to try to confirm whether we heard it or
not."

Fiore, pointing at a less-elusive bird, shrugged and said: "I'm really happy
just to be able to see an American robin."

Copyright 1998& The Associated Press. All rights reserved.>>

Great birding and find that next lifer,

John (One of Birders2)
John + Irma = 2, we are birders, too.

John C. LeVine
Birders2 at aol.com
Los Angeles, CA

Please put <To Birders2> in subject line when e-mailing us personally. I do
not open all of the 200-300 e-mails I receive each day, but I want to be sure
to read your e-mails to us. Thanks!

A CONUNDRUM: If the Amazon Forest holds the cures for the diseases affecting
humankind; Then will not the resulting increased multitudes of humans doom the
Amazon Forest? Then humans?
____________________________________________________
A thought on leaving a showing of IMAX's "Amazon" 11/03/97

April 30, 1998
2:02 pm PDT