Saturday, March 21, 2009

Eye (and Ear) Candy for Birders

For one of the sexiest flash intros to a Web site ever, click on Life List, where you will be introduced to Olivia Gentile’s new book about birding legend Phoebe Snetsinger.

Many thanks to Gunnar Engblom for bringing this site to my attention.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

That is an awesome flash intro! My wife wants the book.

March 21, 2009 7:05 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That is a phenomenal intro, tho she's got to have a skip intro button so you don't have to sit thru it over and over when you revisit her website. I am trying to break my book buying addiction, so I probably won't buy it but I'm dying to know if she answers the question I've asked about Snetsinger many times. Did this incredibly wealthy woman (daughter of Leo Burnett - an advertising tycoon) ever donate one thin dime to conservation efforts? Everyone I have asked - those who knew her - said they think not but don't really know. I once read an article she wrote, published posthumously in Birding, which was absolutely appalling. It was something to the effect that it was great that there were all these roads being built into the Ecuadorian forests so as to make it easier to get places to see birds. And that same article - or maybe another - saying how birds are getting rare, so better hurry up and go see them. Turned my stomach. Years later, when the U.S. Dept. of Justice used that argument to justify the practice bombing of Farallon de Medinilla - birders value rare birds more than common birds, and we're doing them a favor by making the rare - I thought of that Snetsinger article. It wasn't as far-fetched and outrageous a claim as some made it seem.

But honestly - THREE trips to Madagascar? Could she have done two and donated the money the third trip would have cost to maybe save a little of Madagascar's forests?

If you get the book, I'd love to know what if anything it says about her interest in bird or nature conservation.

April 06, 2009 10:37 AM  

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