Hello Tweets,

I have been collecting and posting links to stories
about birds in the news to my blog. I post a new
installment of "Birds in the News" each Friday.
Apparently, this little feature is becoming popular on
my blog because readers are sending me pictures to
share, too. This week, a reader sent me a picture of a
dead hairy woodpecker with a grossly overgrown beak
that he found under his feeder that you might want to
look at;

http://girlscientist.blogspot.com/2005/03/birds-in-news-4.html

How might this bird possibly survive so long with a
beak that is so overgrown? I don't know the precise
answer to that question, but I can tell you that I
recently finished reading the excellent book, "In
Search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker" and that book
included the story and photo of a female ivory-billed
woodpecker with a grossly overgrown beak. She survived
because two other ivory-billed woodpeckers fed her --
as if she was their chick. In fact, that bird only
died because a collector shot her!

Happy holidays,

Devorah A. N. Bennu, PhD
New York City
birdologist [at] yahoo [dot] com
public blog: http://girlscientist.blogspot.com

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