Why are fish and birds mass-perishing all over the world?

Awright, so at this point we've got...

...Thousands of dead fish and birds in Arkansas

...Thousands of dead fish in a river in Florida

...Bunches of dead birds in Kentucky

...More dead birds in Louisiana

...Thousands of dead fish in the Chesapeake Bay area

...Dead fish in New Zealand

...Countless birds found dead in Sweden

...Tons of dead fish washing ashore in Brazil

...Thousands of dead birds found in eastern Texas

So, what's going on here? This kind of thing worldwide, I'm rather reminded of what Goldfinger told James Bond: that first is happenstance, a second time is coincidence, a third time or more is... something else?

No, don't go calling me a "conspiracy theorist" or anything like that. But any person would be hard-pressed not to admit: that is a rather peculiar (and disturbing) pattern going on lately.

EDIT 4:29 p.m. EST: Add 40,000 dead crabs washed ashore in Great Britain to the list of weird animal deaths over the past several days.

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All creatures great and gluttonous

Outside my window is a wooden bird feeder. All this winter I've kept it well stocked with sunflower seeds and whatnot, and it's proven especially popular with our local feathered friends during the recent spate of harsh weather. 'Tis been quite good fun watching the cardinals and blue jays flutter in and get their fill.

Well a short while ago a new customer flew into the joint. It was a woodpecker...

...and he's pecking away furiously on the wooden sides of the feeder!

Hey Woody: it's a bird feeder, not bird food!

But I guess I have no choice but to let him have at it. My feeder enjoys too great a reputation as an "all you can eat" establishment and the woodpecker is determined to take me at my word.

Maybe next year I should change it to a metal feeder and leave out some strips of bark for the cellulose-loving clientele...

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Spotted: Bald Eagle in Rockingham County!

Of all the times that I didn't have my camera with me, it had to be on the way back from a bookstore in Greensboro today... sigh.

But I've no doubt what it was that I saw here in Rockingham County, North Carolina a short while ago. At a national conference for the Boy Scouts of America's Order of the Arrow in Colorado years ago I got to see a Bald Eagle way up close: those birds are positivalutely HUGE!

I spotted the Bald Eagle from my car at about 3 p.m. this afternoon, just off U.S. 158. Soaring at not too great a height over a field off to my right. I've never seen a beak that brilliantly yellow in these parts and that's what caught my eye. That and the wingspan. It soon glided off west into the woods and I lost sight of it. But I'm not gonna soon forget seeing it :-)

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Pigeons much faster than Internet in South Africa

Telkom is the largest provider of Internet service in the country of South Africa. You'd think that data delivery would be especially speedy over its network, right?

Well, Unlimited IT wasn't satisfied. So on Wednesday it conducted an experiment: using an 11-month old carrier pigeon to send data from the company's office near Pietermaritzburg to the city of Durban, 50 miles away. A data card was strapped to the pigeon's leg and sent on its way. As Winston the pigeon was flying out the window, Unlimited IT began transmitting the same data via the Internet to the Durban location.

Winston the pigeon arrived 1 hour and 8 minutes later. The data was downloaded upon arrival. The complete transfer took 2 hours, 6 minutes and 57 seconds.

By that point, Telkom had only delivered four percent of the same data!

(I don't think my old 14.4 modem was that slow...)

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"Life finds a way."

This is the nest that some birds have made in the satellite television box on the back of my house!

Nevermind all those cables and wires and other potential hazards to wildlife. I'm just astonished that they were able to open the box to begin with... and then build what otherwise looks to be a comfortable avian domicile inside of it.

While I was taking this picture a startled bird flew out. I was able to count a number of eggs within the nest. There is another built atop an outside light beneath the overhang of the roof.

I suppose that wherever there is found a niche - whether left by God or man - that nature is quite adept at filling it.

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