Bye, Bye Birdies

What's so striking in this morning's story on declining bird species in the U.S.--of 683 species that regularly breed in this country, 178, or 26 percent, are in trouble--is the new culprit on the scene: global warming.

That should have been obvious. If you're a murrelet that breeds and feeds around Alaskan glaciers, as those ice mountains melt of course you're in trouble. And if you're a shorebird like the sharp-tailed sparrow