Word: birding
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...Washington the Smithsonian Institution is shipping 57,200 insects to a secret cache. Why all the fuss over a tattered bug on a rusty pin? Or a frowsy bird skin? A pickled fish? Because these are the type specimens—the original catches from which the species was first scientifically described and defined. Like the platinum-iridium bar in the International Bureau of Weights and Measures at Sèvres on which the meter is engraved, each specimen is the standard against which other members of the species and new varieties are measured...
...Specimens of such extinct creatures as the great auk, the Labrador duck, the sea mink; and the only Townsend's bunting (a bird) ever found in hand or in bush...
Warriors. In Coffeyville, Kans., an Osage Indian introduced his family to a visitor. "I am Brave Eagle," he announced. "This is my son, Fighting Bird- and this is my grandson, Four-Motored Bomber...
...gasoline. It costs money. Without it they can neither fish for bonita nor make Jonas' ancient clapboard truck run. When a sailor son (Jon Hall) comes home with a prize U.S. fighting cock, Jonas wagers the family furniture, the vanilla crop, anything at hand, on the fortune-restoring bird. The result is the blackest day in the history of the Tuttles...
They still tell of a great bird, called Aepyornis by paleontologists, which used to roam the island until a few thousand years ago. Aepyornis was ten feet tall, could not fly, laid eggs bigger than footballs. The Malagasy still find an occasional Aepyornis egg and sell it for as much as five or ten head of cattle to the Frenchmen, who then sell it to a collector or museum for as much as five or ten thousand dollars...