I read this report today in this week's Guardian Weekly (a digest of the
British newspaper). It was tacked on to the end of a report about the
decline in British bird numbers due to agro-chemicals (Tree Sparrows down by
89% since 1969), and I don't know what the source is, or how accurate the
report is, but I'm just passing it on with a few parentheses for the benefit
of birding-aussers.
"....Global warming was being blamed last week for the devastation of
another of the world's most plentiful bird species [no previous reference to
another of the world's most plentiful bird species occurs in the preceding
paragraphs, by the way], the sooty shearwater [sic], which regularly flies
to Ireland and Britain from habitats in California, South America and
Australia. US scientists say that warmer seas have reduced the plankton that
forms its staple diet [?].
The findings suggest that 4 million shearwaters vanished between 1987 and
1994 [I'd love to see a shearwater vanish, ('ping'), and to see 4 million
vanish...]. Dick Viet of Washington state university [sic] said: 'This may
be the first real evidence for a major natural change as the result of
global warning.'"
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Dr John Leonard
PO Box 243, Woden,
ACT 2606, AUSTRALIA
"Perhaps it is not too much to ask that we learn
to live with grace in a system that permits only
relative prediction." John F. Eisenburg
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