Caution!  If you click on the link that follows you might experience nausea and extreme giddiness, and there is also a small chance that you might permanently talk in baby-speak, which would, of course, render you unfit for the company of humans.  Shawn has outdone himself with a post that is chock full o’ baby shorebirds and a duckling.  Head over to Biological Ramblings and check the chicks out!

Because with possible sightings like these, well, what birder wouldn’t want to go?

This year’s CITES meeting is turning into a love-in of special-interest groups all proclaiming with one voice how they’re unique and must be allowed to continue they’re unique way of life - and, sorry if that helps push a few species towards extinction, that way of life comes first. As one commentator succinctly put it: “It is very interesting how the more hunters, ranchers, pig farmers, fisherman, trappers, rich guys, poor guys, middle guys, north, south, developed, undeveloped, all claim to be special and different and deserving of exemptions to keep on doing whatever they are doing to animals, because they are special and unique, the more they all sound less and less unique and all the same.” Less and less unique and all seemingly not understanding that when the animal they ‘harvest’, ’sell’, or ‘depend on’ is dead and gone so is their special and unique interest…

Another typical CITES meeting - economics rule, intelligence withers on the vine: “Opposition grew today against a proposal to ban the export of Atlantic bluefin tuna, with several Arab countries joining Japan in arguing it would hurt poor fishing nations and wasn’t scientifically justified.” What a quotation, what a farce. Surely, rational people might ask, wouldn’t the extinction of the bluefin tuna hurt ‘poor fishing nations’ even more?