Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Weird and Wonderful in the News

March 9, 2011


I enjoy oddball news stories provided they’re the sort that makes a person smile. This headline caught my eye this morning: Oldest wild bird in US is new mother.


Okay- how do they know she’s the oldest wild bird in the US? Big Brother sees all, but birds, too?

Actually, they do know. Long ago in the Wayback Time, in 1956 before I was born, a US Geological Survey scientist banded the Laysan albatross they’ve named Wisdom. People who know birds determined she was about five years old at the time of banding.

Now scientists have recorded her with a chick on the Midway Atoll, thirteen hundred miles northwest of Honolulu.

Well done, Wisdom!

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