RIKLBLOG

Tomorrow
27 Jan. 2009
Yesterday
 
Index
Eventide
SETI League
PriUPS Project
Bonus!
Contact

Add to Technorati Favorites

Listen to or download MP3 version of this blogitem

Bird Facts

Splunge?

No. Snarge.  Don't believe me?  This from Sunday's New York Times:

The National Museum of Natural History in Washington may not leap to mind when both engines on a high-tech plane quit at 3,200 feet. But around the corner from the stuffed African elephant that greets the visiting hordes of schoolchildren, down a back hall from the employee bike rack, a staff of four in the Feather Identification Lab took in samples from 4,600 bird-plane collisions, or bird strikes, last year. Arriving mostly in sealed plastic bags, these included birds’ feet, whole feathers or tiny bits of down, and pulverized bird guts, known as snarge.

Correctly identifying the species involved in a bird strike can be important, said Carla J. Dove, the lab’s director. “If people know the cause of a problem, they can do something about it,” she said. “If you have cockroaches, you don’t call an ant exterminator.”

I didn't know that exterminators were so specialized, either!  Given the high reportorial standards of the Times, I do hope that they asked Carla J. "Dove" for photo ID. 


1990 Corvette ZR1 - FOR SALE

Special Advertising Section

Please buy this lovely blue Corvette ZR1

 

Corvette ZR1 1990 Quasar Blue FOR SALE

NP:  "Party Doll" - Buddy Knox

© 2009
Richard Factor

Yesterday  |  Tomorrow