Let’s devote today’s column to a collection of fascinating factoids and interesting items about wildlife and nature. Here goes: Artist/author Ralph Steadman has developed a tongue-in-cheek list of birds he thinks may be headed for extinction. These include the unsociable leftwing and the orange-beaked spotted emulsion cootflake. Other birds he thinks may already be extinct are the gob swallow, long-legged shortwing and the needless smut.
On a more realistic note, one of the nation’s best birding festivals is scheduled for November 8-12 this year. The Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival promises five days of field trips with South Texas specialties and “unforgettable socializing.” If you’d like to see green jays, chachalacas and great kiskadees, head on down. For more information, call (209) 227-4823 or visit www.rgvbf.org.
U.S. and Canadian consumers purchase more than one billion pounds of bird food each year, much of it consisting of black-oil sunflower seeds. North Dakota and South Dakota grow more than seventy percent of the U.S. market’s sunflowers.
