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Hi all,
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In mid-December Delia and I were driving a block or two from the Junction in West Seattle and saw crows mobbing a bigger bird.? I got all ready to say ?Red,? but was surprised to see a Raven instead.? The Crows in West Seattle may be giving up the fight: We saw them doing a lot better job attacking a Raven in Squamish on Sunday.
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BAD REPORTING on airport strikes
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Thanks for the interesting airport bird strike lists.
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I?d like to call attention, at least to birders, that there is bad reporting going on in regard to bird strikes of airplanes.
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When stories say ?after striking a flock of birds,? as one by AP/New York Times did in the Seattle Times on Jan 19, for instance, they aren?t being helpful.?
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The news media love to merge all 9000 species of birds together in their reports.? I recently wrote a letter when the Seattle Times ran a story that huge flocks of ?birds? were creating mayhem in Denmark.? That?s like saying there are going to be a lot of mammals heading to the football stadium.
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Most birds weigh a fraction of a pound, and large ones such as a female Red-tailed Hawk? tip the scales at 4 pounds.
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By contrast, a Canada Goose weighs 10 pounds. (The goose is the ecological equivalent of a flying cow, as both are grass grazers that require a very large digestive tract since there is so little nutrition in grass.)
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Add to that the fact that Canada Geese are relatively abundant, (thanks to the fact that most Americans especially in the East? have a behavioral disorder that causes them to crave spending time?riding on?lawn mowers) and? fly in flocks, and it?s clear that geese pose a qualitatively greater and different danger than ?birds? in general and should be differentiated in news reports. ?(Small birds can also bring a plane down but are less likely to, especially now with minimum bird ingestion standards on engines).
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Sequim Trip,
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?On Sunday, Delia and I and MA Rossing had 5 Wilson?s Snipe and a Dipper at Jimmy-come-lately creek by the Jamestown S?klallam ?Casino, 5 Long-tailed Ducks at the John Wayne Marina, a huge flock of Brant at Graysmarsh plus a Merlin and Peregrine there.?
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Thanks all, Ed Newbold? ednewbold1 at yahoo.com? ?Beacon Hill, Seattle
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