“You mean fog larks?… Those are just stupid little birds you environmentalists put on the property so we can’t log it.”
From Rare Bird: Pursuing the Mystery of the Marbled Murrelet
Oh, and I got new binoculars today! It had nothing at all to do with my tireless efforts at planting endangered species in front of developers…
Great Auk - or Greatest Auk? 
February 28, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Those of us with connections to the Audubon mafia think you would do well to keep our activities hush-hush lest you end up like the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Capiche?
Congrats on the new glass.
February 28, 2008 at 2:52 pm
What, getting lost in a swamp for 40 years until someone flushes you off a tree?
That’s not too bad as long as there’s woodcocks to see!
February 28, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Or hiding out in Cuba… (yeah, I know, that’s just wishful thinking. But I could use a good cigar.)
February 29, 2008 at 5:54 am
I worked a summer in the Oregon Coast Range looking for those little devils. The training for spotting them is to put you in a phone booth (without a roof) that’s surrounded by black plastic, pour buckets of water in through the roof and then toss Nerf footballs over the roof to see if you can spot them.
OK, not really, but the pre-dawn surveys conducted in a rainforest were pretty much just like that. Did see my share of murrelets and they are neat little birds.
Have you read Eye of the Albatross by Carl Safina?
February 29, 2008 at 5:52 pm
[…] hiking up a mountain, and getting up at four in the morning for experiences a lot like those that Laura recounts here. Yet she never veers into letting the account become more about her than her […]