Audubon articles from May 2007

Audubon archives from May 2007

Editor's note.
May 1, 2007... As Audubon's staff was putting the final touches on this issue, we received some good news. The American Society of Magazine Editors, for the first time in 14 years, has named our magazine as a finalist in the general excellence category. This...

Audubon view.
May 1, 2007... Suddenly everyone is talking about the environment again. It reminds me of the movement's early days, when the health and safety threats posed by air and water pollution motivated people to demand action. Congress responded by passing the Clean...

The coal truth.(Letters from our readers)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2007... Cameron Davidson's photos of mountaintop mining in Appalachia ["Scarface," March-April] prove that this forgotten part of the country has been abused. Mining has also contaminated the drinking water in coal country, and a large part of America...

Conscientious cuisine.(Letters from our readers)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2007... Thank you for "Happy Meals" [March-April]. I had the pleasure of dining at Stone Barns in 2005, but I do wonder: Can we have local farming and naturally grown produce without the sense of moral superiority? I hope so. The piece accurately...

Missing salamanders.(Letters from our readers)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2007... Regarding salamander conservation ["A Rare Jewel," March-April]: We moved to our acreage in North Carolina 30 years ago. At that time, there were salamanders everywhere, under pieces of bark and in logs in the woods. Something changed 20 years...

Correction.(Letters from our readers)(Correction notice)
May 1, 2007... In "Happy Meals" (May-June), Quentin Bacon should have been credited for three photographs (two on page 87, one on page 91). We regret the omission.

Dancing in the UV light.(field notes)(ultraviolet light)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... Jumping spiders literally glow before they mate. Ultraviolet reflectors on males help them attract females, according to a study recently published in the journal Science. "This is the first time that UV light has been shown to have different...

Giving swallows the boot.(field notes)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... Soccer fans flocking to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup might be dealing barn swallows a serious blow. Plans for a new airport, which would be built partly in anticipation of a tourism boom, could interfere with a reed bed where three...

Business makes cents.(GLOBAL WARMING)
May 1, 2007... Petitioning for stronger environmental regulations is hardly business as usual for corporations. Then again, there is nothing "usual" about global warming. In what appears to be a promising merger of environmental progress and economic growth,...

Bottoms up.(field notes)(the world's most expensive coffee)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... Kopi Luwak is the world's most expensive coffee, with a price tag--more than $500 a pound--that packs an earth-shattering caffeine jolt. The reason is that the grinds are made from the waste of the Asian palm civet. ("Kopi" is Indonesian for...

Land ho!(REAL ESTATE)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... If you think Manhattan real estate is hot, check out the Corn Belt, where farmland in Iowa fetched $3,204 per acre in 2006, jumping 13 percent during the course of 2006, compared with a 10 percent rise in 2005, according to the Seventh Federal...

Lonesome dove.(ENDANGERED SPECIES)
May 1, 2007... As if the ground-dwelling Grenada dove hasn't endured enough--habitat loss, invasive predators, hurricanes--its critically endangered population (estimated at just 180 birds in 2004, before Hurricane Ivan) may be wiped out by a sprawling Four...

Get off of my cloud.(field notes)(eagles airs pace)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... Nicky Moss, one of Great Britain's top female paragliders, was soaring more than a mile and a half above northern New South Wales, Australia, when she heard a screech behind her just before a wedge-tailed eagle crashed headlong into the canopy...

Holy mackerel, Batman!(field notes)(neotropical catfish called Otocinclus batmani)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... A newly discovered species of neotropical catfish was recently named for Batman by ichthyologist Pablo Lehmann of the Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. Otocinclus batmani was found in a small tributary to the Pure...

Grandfather knows best.(field notes)(Brief article)
May 1, 2007... A grandpa's sage advice may be the biggest breakthrough in bug repellent since DEET. Scientists with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) have isolated two insect-repelling compounds from leaves of the American beautyberry plant, a...

In the soup.(SEALIFE)
May 1, 2007... For years marine biologists have worried about the notoriously secretive sharkfin trade in Asia. Shark-fin soup is a staple at Chinese celebrations and is popular on Chinese menus in the United States and Europe. Scientists' fears were...

The flamingo man: Sandy Sprunt spread his passion for birds and wildlife from the cypress swamps of southern Florida to the bird-filled salt lakes of remote Inagua.(Tribute)(Alexander Sprunt IV)(Obituary)
May 1, 2007... Alexander "Sandy" Sprunt IV, National Audubon's director of research from 1960 to 1993, was the original "Audubon brat." The son of Alexander Sprunt Jr., who was Audubon's director of southern sanctuaries for many years, he spent a couple of...

Green guru: advice for the Eco-minded.(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2007... What are the five easiest changes I can make in my home to reduce my household carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming? James Crooks, Chicago, IL Carbon dioxide is produced when fossil fuels, including coal, oil, and natural...

Salmon of the east: river herring are neither as sporty nor as appetizing as that better-known anadromous fish, but they serve a highly nutritious role on nature's plate.(Wildlife)
May 1, 2007... At first light, you can hear the pitter-patter of hundreds of fish tails. Fresh from the sea, the alewives charge repeatedly en masse, flailing at the rushing water below a small but insurmountable dam, trying to find passage into the lake...

Creating buzz: don't invite native bees to your yard just to be virtuous. Do it because they will pump up your garden's produce production.(Audubon Living)
May 1, 2007... "See that?" asks Gordon Frankie, an entomologist and professor at the University of California-Berkeley. We're standing in his bee garden, a long, narrow rectangle planted with patches of different wildflowers and shrubs at the edge of a field...

The Wal-Mart effect: by stocking its shelves with affordable organic foods, the world's largest retailer is about to prove that what's good for the company is good for the planet and consumers. Or is it?(Business)
May 1, 2007... Several times a week a blue truck with a stainless steel collection tank drives up a newly blacktopped road in Guilford, Vermont, heading toward Mary Ellen and David Franklin's organic dairy farm. It rolls past a weathered white farmhouse...

The orchid keepers: as prairie fragments continue to dwindle, dedicated scientists and volunteers brave oppressive heat and humidity to take the future of one of our most exquisite--and imperiled--flowers into their own hands.(THREATENED SPECIES)
May 1, 2007... Kris Lah hops out of his official U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service truck and pulls on his backpack, and we set out across a small park behind a suburban townhouse development north of Chicago. Although it's just 9 a.m., it's getting steamy on...

Blowing in the wind: armed with a powerful electron microscope, an artist reveals the exquisite beauty of seeds and their dispersal.(PHOTO ESSAY)
May 1, 2007... "If there is any living thing which might explain to us the mystery beyond this life, it should be seeds," wrote the great naturalist Donald Culross Peattie, in his 1939 book Flowering Earth. Worlds of their own, full of import, seeds are, in...

Sound check: it's one of the nation's most important (and underappreciated) estuaries, even if it's often treated like an open sewer. Now an unusual coalition of advocates from labor, industry, and the environment is breathing new life into Long Island Sound.(RESTORATION)
May 1, 2007... On a humid morning in late July, Nancy Seligson piloted her 17-foot motorboat slowly out of a tidal inlet and into Larchmont Harbor near the western end of Long Island Sound--a 110-mile long, 1,320-square-mile estuary sprawling along the coasts...

A day in the life: twenty-four hours of an epic canoe trip across wild Canada offers a bit of everything, from the mundane to the amazing.(Journal)
May 1, 2007... The bird falls out of the sky late in the afternoon, right into the calm water between our two canoes. Plop. Head first, its tail feathers sticking straight up like a badminton birdie. Yathkyed Lake, Nunavut, Canada: a massive block of...

Flower Confidential.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2007... Flower Confidential By Amy Stewart Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 306 pages, $23.95 From wedding bouquets to Easter arrangements to funeral wreaths, flowers have long been symbols of emotion. But while a red rose might convey the message...

The Place You Love Is Gone: Progress Hits Home.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2007... The Place You Love Is Gone: Progress Hits Home By Melissa Holbrook Pierson W. W. Norton & Company, 206 pages. $14.95 Modern-day development, with its sprawling subdivisions and strip malls, often obliterates vast natural landscapes. But the...

Fungi and fantasy: Victorian England sneered at Beatrix Potter the naturalist, but immortalized her gifts as a children's book writer. A biographer details a life beyond Peter Rabbit.(ESSAY)(Book review)
May 1, 2007... Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature By Linda Lear St. Martin's Press, 608 pages, $30 In 1964 the prestigious Linnean Society of London, one of Great Britain's leading organizations for the promotion of natural history, made an astonishing...

Art of the wild.(In Windows on Nature by Stephen Christopher Quinn)(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2007... The more than 150 habitat dioramas at New York's American Museum of Natural History frequently leave visitors asking, "Is it real?" In Windows on Nature (Abrams, 180 pages, $40), Stephen Christopher Quinn details the complicated process--from...

A Leaky Tent Is a Piece of Paradise.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2007... A Leaky Tent Is a Piece of Paradise Edited by Bonnie Tsui Sierra Club Books, 311 pages, $19.95 To cope with his first heartbreak, Tim Neville moved into a tent in his parent's yard and let nature bring him back to life. At age 17,...

Extreme Animals: The Toughest Creatures on Earth.(Brief article)(Book review)(Children's review)
May 1, 2007... Extreme Animals: The Toughest Creatures on Earth By Nicola Davies/Illustrated by Neal Layton Candlewick Press, 64 pages, $12.99 Ages 8 and up Extreme Animals introduces kids to a panoply of creatures "that relish the sort of conditions...

The Tale of Pale Male: A True Story.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2007... The Tale of Pale Male: A True Story By Jeanette Winter Harcourt Books, 32 pages, $16 Ages 3-7 In The Tale of Pale Male, Jeanette Winter tells the story of an intrepid red-tailed hawk that made headlines after first appearing in New York...

Why Are the Ice Caps Melting? The Dangers of Global Warming.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2007... Why Are the Ice Caps Melting? The Dangers of Global Warming By Anne Rockwell/Illustrated by Paul Meisel Harper Collins, 40 pages, $15.99 Ages 5-9 Anne Rockwell makes it easy to teach your children about the perils of global warming with...

Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2007... Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion By Loree Griffin Burns Houghton Mifflin, 64 pages, $18 Ages 10 and up A message in a bottle might be a beachcomber's dream, but a waterlogged shoe can also tell a tale. In...

Gullible.(One Picture)
May 1, 2007... The herring gull (Larus argentatus) is your prototypical "seagull," which is what non-birdwatchers tend to call any gull, even if the closest sea is a thousand miles away. It is an imposing bird, with a wingspan of nearly five feet, as...