Hi Tweetsters - Wanted to alert you to a fascinating story in The
Oregonian about how two Portlanders, Jeff Gilligan and Gerard Lillie,
have almost certainly discovered a new species of storm-petrel.

They came across it unexpectedly while on a Chilean cruise in Feb 2009.
Peter Harrison of Port Townsend, a well-known seabird expert, raised
$30,000 to do a follow-up expedition to try to verify the discovery.
Harrison went back to sea last month and collected feather and blood
samples and is hard at work on a scholarly article documenting the
discovery.

He awaits analysis of the samples but believes it almost certainly is a
new species -- apparently to be called the Puerto Montt Storm-Petrel.
(Despite a long history beaten into me by my newspaper editors of NOT
capitalizing species names, I was chastened by recent Tweeters posts and
am trying to cure myself of that lamentable practice.)

You can see the story at: http://bit.ly/grYDcw

Jane Hadley
Seattle, WA