Interesting piece on the Feather Identification Lab at the National
Museum of Natural History from January 24th following the crash of
Flight 1549.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/science/25birds.html?&pagewanted=all>

> The feathers or other bird parts submitted are compared against a
> library of 620,000 bird samples, some gathered by Darwin and
> Audubon. Another contributor was Theodore Roosevelt, who collected
> birds around the family home in Oyster Bay, on Long Island, before
> he switched to hunting big game. And if the feathers do not make
> the case, the snarge goes to the DNA section, which has a huge
> database. Between the two, the success rate of identifying the type
> of bird involved is 99 percent.
>

That is an amazing rate.

snarge == pulverized bird bits

and in a case almost out of CSI

> Airplanes do sometimes hit deer, but a phone call to the pilot
> confirmed that this strike was at 1,500 feet, so more investigation
> was required. Eventually, the lab used a tiny piece of feather to
> determine that the bird was a black vulture. The bird apparently
> had deer flesh in its belly.
>
--
Kevin Purcell
kevinpurcell at pobox.com