Cats and Birds information on net.

The 1925-vintage Travel Air was one of the pioneers, and it was primarily used before the Stearmans showed up in the late 1940s. Most crop-dusters were the Travel Air 4000s, and more than 1,000 Travel Airs were manufactured.

The beautiful blue and yellow example featured here is owned by the Precissi Flying Service, and it's the world's last cropdusting Travel Air! It's powered by a sevencylinder Continental radial engine and has a 150-gallon hopper. At work, it flies at 80 to 85mph.

Three models of Cessna were designed for Ag work-the Ag Wagon, Ag Truck and Ag Husky. The Cessna 188 Ag Wagon has a 200-gallon hopper that can be set up for dry compounds, including seeds, granular material and sulfur. Though Cessnas lack the speed, power and capacities of other Ag aircraft, they are relatively cheap to operate and make good starter aircraft for those just entering the industry.

The 55-foot-- wingspan DW-1 Eagle biplane (designed by Dean Wilson) is rare, but with that span, it's impressive (one of the best-looking Ag planes). Eagle Aircraft Co. produced a total of about 100-all with either radial or a sixcylinder engine. Precissi Flying Service currently operates three that came with 250-gallon hoppers. Because of its large wingspan, the Eagle has one of the widest, most uniform swath widths.

The Grumman-designed G-164 Ag Cat was built under contract by Schweitzer. Variants include the A, B, B+, Super B, Turbine B, C, King Cat and D models; the turbine-powered aircraft are sometimes dubbed "Turbo Cats." Over the years, their hopper sizes have ranged from 200 to 600 gallons. The Ag Cat name matches other Grumman aircraft with "Cat" names-Wildcat, Hellcat, Bearcat, etc.

Schweitzer eventually took full ownership of the Ag Cat and built the last of approximately 3,000 in 1993. Ag Cats have an industry reputation for being one of the most durable Ag aircraft because they were designed to operate from rough fields and to land on dirt strips. Depending on the model, the Ag Cat's working speed ranges from 100 to 122mph.

Designed by Leland Snow and originally manufactured by Rockwell, the Thrush was most recently marketed by the Ayres Corp. It can have a radial or a turbine engine. The S-2R model with the larger Wright 1820 radial engine is called the "Bull Thrush"; its working speed range is between 105 and 140mph; hopper sizes are 400-, 510-, 600-, and 660-gallon; more than 2,000 have been built.

BIRD: The Ultimate Multimedia Guide to the World of Birds, 1995, and CAT: The Ultimate Multimedia Guide to the World of Cats, 1995. CD-ROMs for Mac or PC with 486SX/ 25 Mhz or higher microprocessor, 4Mb of RAM, MPC-compatible double-speed CD-ROM drive and sound card, mouse, SVGA 256color display, and loudspeakers or headphones, Windows 3.1 or later.$29.95. DINOSAUR HUNTER,1996. Mac or PC with 486DX/33 Mhz or higher microprocessor, 8 Mb of RAM, double-speed CD-ROM drive and 8 bit sound card, mouse, SVGA 256-color display, and loudspeakers or headphones, Windows 3.1 or later. $29.95. DK Multimedia, Inc., 95 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016; 800-DKMM575. Those readers who have appreciated the remarkable visual appeal and accuracy of content in the Eyewitness series of books published by Dorling Kindersley will find the publisher's Eyewitness Virtual Reality Series CD-ROMs even more breathtaking. To date, the series consists of three CDROMs: Cat and Bird, published in 1995, and Dinosaur Hunter, which became available in the summer of 1996. At a time when developers are searching (and not always successfully) for ways to optimize the potential of CD-ROM publishing, DK Multimedia relies on the quality of its images, accurate content and straightforward prose. In addition, the "museum" format of all three CD-ROMs provides a familiar paradigm for navigating the programs.

The CD-ROMs are virtually identical in their organizational structure. An unobtrusive menu in the upper righthand corner of the screen allows users to check their location within the virtual museum, and also leads to help screens, other options (such as printing) and an index. The user can navigate the museum by moving the cursor over the floor plan, taking one of several museum tours or by typing a word into the index.

Children (and adults) will love to visit the museum "store," where images, sounds and stationery of cats, birds or dinosaurs can be "purchased," or saved to the hard drive. Dinosaur Hunter also allows users to make postcards, invitations, envelopes, labels and even masks.

It is, perhaps, the things you don't know about Hawaii that are as important as the things you do. Orchids and pineapples don't belong here. Neither do the wild pigs that are tearing up the rainforest.

To find the real Hawaii you must go to places like Hakalau National Wildlife Refuge, tucked away on the windward slope of Mauna Kea and blanketed by a mist that shrouds its dense thicket of koa and 'ohi' a trees in shades of gray.

This 33,000-acre refuge was set aside in 1985 as a haven for the islands' tropical and endangered native birds, and flashes of brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows are visible particularly on clear, bright mornings.

Settlers have brought many changes to the Hawaiian Islands, beginning with the degradation of the native lowlands when the Polynesians arrived more than 1,000 years ago. In the late 1700s cattle, goats, and European pigs were released into the forests; hundreds of additional plants, animals, and insects followed.

In fact, the most common lowland plants seen today are ginger and plumeria. Mongooses, cats, and rats have been introduced as well, all to the detriment of Hawaii's native habitat and species. Hakalau--like much of Hawaii--is slowly recovering from hundreds of years of degradation.

That's where Richard Wass comes in. Wass, refuge manager for Hakalau, is charged with protecting and restoring the refuge, getting it to look the way Hawaii looked before coming in contact with Western civilization.

Hawaii has been referred to as the endangered species capital of the world. "We're trying to change that," Wass says. "Knowing how organisms adapt to environments can be educational. Preserving these species has meaning and value for people all over the world."

Doing that, though, is easier said than done. The refuge promotes the recovery of endangered forest birds and their habitat by preventing further degradation of the native forest. Grazing by domestic cattle has been eliminated. Management units are fenced to exclude wild cattle and pigs. Feral animals are removed from the units by drives, hunting, and trapping. Alien plants are controlled by herbicides, hand grubbing, and fire.

Wild birds may fly south for the winter, but pet birds need to be more concerned about the "migration patterns" of their vacationing owners. So one enterprice in Florida offers hotel accommodations to fine feathered pets whose humans have temporarily flown the coop.

"Birds get lonely without people around," says Susan Crowley, who disagrees with the old idea that while dogs and cats Weed a pet sitter or must be boarded when their owners are away, birds can do fine with an occasional Visit from their owners' friends. In fact, Crowley believed so strongly that the needs of birds equal -- and and some cases surpass -- those of cats and dogs that she decided to do something about it. The result is Bird Care with Love, which she calls a bed and breakfast for birds.

Crowley's idea, though new and apparently unique, may soon catch on in other locations. With boarding facilities catering mainly to cats, dogs, and a few exotic animals, birds have more or less had to wing it until now. Most are left home alone, with only a few visits from neighbors or friends to freshen food and water and sometimes clean their cages. Bird Care with Love, however, not only provides pet birds with human companionship but also caters to their preferences in almost all areas.

Before bringing a bird in, owners fill out a detailed questionnaire about their pets' habits and health. For example, Crowley wants to know whether or not a bird is used to having a tV or radio on during the day, if it should spend time outside its cage, and if it should receive fruits and vegetables every day. In case of emergency, owners can leave the number of their veterinarian or choose from a list of local veterinarians provided by Crowley. The questionnaire ends with a request for a detailed description of a typical day in the bird's life at home.

"A lot of birds are pretty spoiled," says Crowley. "You can tell right away when the owner comes in with a suitcase fall of special treats and belongings. With some of the larger, more intelligent birds, you often have to deal with them as you would a small child, so I try my best to create an atmosphere and environment that is as close as possible to what they are used to at home."

Little western birds have invaded the East!

Hi, I'm Freddy Finch, and those are my babies in the nest at right. My mate and I raise our young in homey places--like that windowsill on a house. And some of our cousins build nests near houses all across the country. That's why we're called house finches!

Most wild animals live in wild places. But we house finches also like living in cities, towns, and suburbs. You could say we like to call your house our home. Wherever you live in the United States, you most likely have house-finch houseguests. We hang out in the best backyards from coast to coast.

But it wasn't always this way. At one time, house finches nested in trees, cactuses, and rocky ledges of the West. We moved into nearby towns and cities as soon as they were built. Then we finches made a "hop" from the West to the East. This is the way it happened:

About 60 years ago, when your grandparents were kids, some California pet dealers got the idea that house finches would make great pets. (People admired our pretty red feathers. They also liked our long, warbly songs.)

Anyway, the dealers caught some house finches and sold them to pet stores in the East. To make us seem more exciting, they called us "Hollywood Finches," because we came from California.

Before long, wildlife officers in New York City discovered the birds in pet shops. They ordered the owners to stop selling the birds. (It's against the law in the United States to sell wild birds.)

THE GREAT ESCAPE

One owner (and maybe more) was afraid he'd be arrested. So he decided to get rid of the "evidence" by setting his finches free. Those western birds liked the East. They settled right down to raise families. Soon the baby birds grew up and had families of their own. In just a few years, there were hundreds of us living in and around New York City.

Over the years, my relatives moved from one town to the next. We spread out far from New York. (Look at the map to see where we went.) And not long ago, we eastern house finches met up with our western cousins!

If you live east of the Rocky Mountains, you're likely to find us everywhere except where there aren't many houses. We feel right at home around buildings, because they have such good places for us to nest. You might find our nests under the eaves of roofs, in hanging plants, on barn rafters, and on windowsills of buildings.

Communication towers pose a deadly obstacle for migrating birds.

Charles Kemper, now retired from his career as a small-town physician, recalls the news that prompted him to undertake one of the most thorough and longest-lasting scientific studies of bird mortality.

On the night of August 29, 1957, he heard reports that a massive bird kill was taking place near a television tower in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. "A lady living close to the TV tower noticed that it was raining birds. They were coming down on her roof, garage, and lawn. Her neighbors reported the same phenomenon."

A local health official thought the birds were struck by some avian plague and ordered them to be buried at the city dump. A local biologist theorized that the kill was caused by poisoning. Yet another person insisted the birds were electrocuted by the tower, recalls Kemper.

But after further investigation and consultation with several ornithologists, Kemper concluded that the reason for the bird deaths was right in front of them: the birds were running into the tower itself. For the next 38 years, the World War II veteran spent many an early morning collecting dead and dying birds from the foot of the tower and keeping rigorous records of his finds.

On foggy nights, says Kemper, the birds, attracted to its lights, fly toward and around the tower--often with unfortunate consequences. "I have heard them strike the wire and hit the ground as I stood under the tower," reports Kemper. One time, "birds were falling steadily at two or three per minute."

Kemper, now 79 years old, remembers one particularly severe kill. "I spent pretty near all day picking up everything I could, but I couldn't pick them all up--it was hardly possible." Over the next several years, Kemper would record or collect from beneath the tower 121,560 dead birds--an average of 3,200 each year--representing 123 species.

Says Kemper, "The problem seems to have been largely ignored and forgotten, but it has not gone away." Fortunately, at least one individual is not ignoring the problem. In fact, bird expert Bill Evans is doing everything he can to make sure the dying birds are neither ignored nor forgotten.

CATS, SPARROWHAWKS, lead-free petrol, loft insulation and cleaner streets. All of these may be factors in the staggering decline of the house sparrow.

But these are only guesses, not certainties. The real reasons for the fall of passer domesticus will not be established for another five years, scientists said yesterday.

After nearly two years of analysing 40 years of data about the house sparrow, a report funded by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), has painted the most authoritative picture so far of the bird's plight.

The study - which also examines the decline of the starling - concludes that there are now 10 million fewer house sparrows in Britain than there were 30 years ago. In the early 1970s, there were 12 to 15 million pairs. Now there are only six million.

The inquiry, led by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), has found that a large drop in survival rates for sparrows in their first year of life during the mid-1970s has played a vital role in their misfortune.

In the early 1960s, more than half of house sparrows lived to be two years old, but the figure subsequently slumped to 30 per cent. This led the population to plummet because they were failing to reach breeding age.

Since then, the sparrow's numbers have continued to decline. While the cause is still unknown, it may be as simple as the fondness cats have for chasing birds.

The report points out that the increasing numbers of people in Britain are keeping cats as pets. One study of a rural village in Bedfordshire showed that up to one-quarter of the breeding pairs of sparrows in the village may have been harmed by cats.

"Cat predation is also likely to account for a large proportion of the juvenile mortality in the village," the study said.

Cats are not the only problem. The sparrowhawk population, badly hit by DDT in the late 1960s and 70s, has returned strongly and colonised urban areas. One sparrowhawk nest in Kensington Gardens in London in 1996 was found to contain the remains of 38 sparrows.

In addition, an estimated 16,000 house sparrows were legally killed in 2001, mainly by farmers. However, that factor, which accounts for only 0.1 per cent of the population, is considered to be insignificant, the report suggests.

While the sparrow is disappearing in Edinburgh and Dublin, its sharpest decline is in London, where its numbers have dropped by 59 per cent between 1994 and 2000.

Putting the Squeeze on Earth

Almost half the land on the planet has been transformed by humans-in ways that include the filling of wetlands, the conversion of prairie to farmland or the replacement of forests with cities. That conclusion comes from a recent analysis of the latest research on the subject. Biologist Jane Lubchenco of Oregon State University presented the findings to more than 4,000 scientists at the International Botanical Congress in St. Louis in August. "As inhabitants of Earth, we need to take stock of these massive changes, understand their implications and change our direction," she said. "We are currently inattentive stewards. It is in our best interests to be more fully engaged in ensuring our own health, prosperity and well-being."

Among the other statistics compiled by Lubchenco and two colleagues, Harold A. Mooney and Peter M. Vitousek of Stanford University:

* Rates of extinction are 100 to 1,000 times what they would be without human-induced changes. On land, the accelerated rates are largely caused by habitat loss and species invasions.

* The coastal areas of the world's oceans contain an estimated 50 "dead zones," areas with little or no oxygen to support life.

* About 3,000 marine species are in transit in ballast water of ships around the world, resulting in a serious invasion of various nonnative species in our waterways.

* Excess fertilizer use and burning of fossil fuel has more than doubled the amount of available nitrogen in the environment. Nitrogen is a nutrient that in large amounts can unbalance ecosystems, causing problems such as blooms of algae.

Despite all the grim findings, Lubchenco found reason for hope: "It is encouraging that there is an increasing focus on the part of the private sector, religious groups and individual citizens to take responsibility and undertake innovative action."

They are all that are left. Tired feathers and forgotten skins relegated to museum bins. Reminders of what once was but can never be again. Testament to the awful truth that a living species, once extinct, will never return. Ghosts! But there is more to these aging specimens than skin and bones. Seen through the lens of photographer Rosamond Purcell, the remains undergo a kind of resurrection. All are specimens from a Dutch museum. All were originally collected from habitats on islands where the arrival of people can change nature's balance almost overnight. "All are obviously dead," Purcell says of her ghosts, "but how these dead can dance!"

Bonin Islands - Grosbeak

In the 1820s, these 8-inch finches found on Peel Island south of Japan fed on fruits and buds in the forests of their volcanic home. Then came an army of new residents: cats, rats, goats and dogs brought by whalers and other settlers. The vulnerable birds probably fed on the ground, and the rats in particular gobbled bird eggs and young. The last grosbeak was seen in 1828.

Although small, this broad-billed bird from the American territory of Guam in the western Pacific Ocean was both territorial and aggressive. But that feistiness wasn't enough to save it from the brown tree snake, an alien intruder that probably arrived on a military plane or ship after World War II, then preyed on Guam birds. About 460 still remained in 1981. Just two years later, not one was found.

Delalande's Coucal

A ground-dwelling cuckoo, Delalande's coucal lived in Madagascar, off the east coast of Africa, along with an array of strange animals found there. One of them was the elephant bird, an avian behemoth whose bones dwarf the coucal in this photograph. Malagasy people hunted the coucal for its feathers. Europeans destroyed forests and brought in cats and rats. The last coucal specimen was collected in 1834.

Spectacled Cormorant

"They weighed 12-14 pounds, so that one single bird was sufficient for three starving men," wrote the explorer Georg Steller, who discovered the species-and sampled its flesh-while shipwrecked on a small Aleutian island in the North Pacific. The cormorant was plump, clumsy, virtually flightless and easy for people to catch. It disappeared around 1850, about a century after Steller discovered it, eaten into extinction by hungry people.

Evolution, Ecology, Conservation, and Management of Hawaiian birds: A Vanishing Avifauna.-J. M. Scott, S. Conant, and C. van Riper 111, Eds. 2001. Studies in Avian Biology no. 22. Cooper Ornithological Society, Allen Press Inc., Lawrence, Kansas. 428 pp., 35 contributed papers, overall introduction plus introductions to each of 6 sections, 3 color plates, 14 drawings, numerous tables, figures, and maps. ISBN: 1-891276-25-5 (cloth) $48.50; ISBN: 1-891276-18-2 (paper) $29.00, includes postage and handling.-Every biologist interested in Hawaiian birds will want to own a copy of this book. It reviews major areas of the state of knowledge of Hawaiian birds at the end of the twentieth century, summarizes the results of older studies, and reports the results of previously unpublished work. Most of the papers were delivered at a symposium of the Cooper Ornithological Society in Hilo in April of 1997. Here they have been expanded and supplemented with eight additional papers. The book is dedicated to Dean Amadon, Paul H. Baldwin, and David Woodside, whose work on Hawaiian birds beginning in the 1930s laid the foundation for the recent renaissance of studies reported here. Excellent drawings by Douglas Pratt and Patrick Ching make the book more attractive. The introduction contains a full checklist of the status of all resident, breeding, and visiting birds recorded on the islands and lists which residents are endangered (or threatened) and which are alien. The large body of published literature on Hawaiian birds is presented as a composite literature-cited section at the end of the book.

Scientists have made extraordinary advances in learning how they live and what we must do to save them

A cavernous room in the Sara-wak Natural History Museum bulges with skins, shells and skeletons of creatures collected by long-dead explorers. Saucer-eyed tarsiers, pale moon rats and scruffy stink badgers perch stiffly in glass cases. A giant tree squirrel the size of a Yorkshire terrier hangs from a branch affixed to the wall just above foot-long centipedes and pill bugs as big as golf balls.

In 1992, as part of an informal survey on the status of the world's 36 species of wild cats, we had come to this museum on the island of Borneo to examine the tired remains of one particularly intriguing animal. Its display case was labeled "bay cat." Like pilgrims at a shrine, we peered reverently at a dark, elongated shape--at the time, the only stuffed Bornean bay cat existing anywhere.

In the next few minutes our solemn review of this ancient skin would take an unexpected turn. And in an instant, the bay cat would become a symbol for what humankind has learned about that band of carnivores called the felids, the mostly lithe and slinky hunters that also include the more familiar domestic cat, the tiger and the African lion.

Noticing our excitement, museum director Charles Leh came over. "I've got another one in the freezer. It just came in," he announced. Certain that he must be mistaken, because the last Bornean bay cat specimen had been collected more than half a century ago, we looked at each other in disbelief. One of the rarest mammals in the world, the bay cat was known only from a few crumbling skins collected mainly in the 1800s. No weights, measurements or photographs of the animal existed. So few specimens had ever been found that some scientists doubted it was a real species.

We followed Leh to an adjoining building, where an aging white freezer was wedged between some large crates. And there, on top of a pile of assorted mammals, birds and fish was the frozen carcass of the elusive bay cat.

The alligators at Clabrook Farm were under the weather last fall. Some seemed depressed, others were wobbly, and a few crawled in circles. Within a few days of first showing such symptoms, alligators at the farm near Christmas, Fla., sank into neurological meltdown and died. During September and October, the farm lost about 300 of the 9,000 gators that it was raising for meat and hide.

In mid-October, one of the farm's baffled owners took three of his sick hatchlings, to reptile veterinarian Elliott R. Jacobson of the University of Florida in Gainesville. Recognizing that they had some kind of brain malady, Jacobson ordered tests for West Nile virus and several other pathogens.

No North American alligator had ever been diagnosed with the infection, but then again North American alligators hadn't had much of a chance to catch it. The virus was reported in the Western Hemisphere for the first time in August 1999 in New York City, where it caused a cluster of human cases of flulike symptoms, some of which turned into fatal brain inflammation. The first West Nile cases confirmed in Florida were a horse's and crow's demise reported in July 2001.

Moreover, people pick up the disease from the bite of an infected mosquito, so the notoriously tough-skinned alligators didn't seem an obvious candidate for that infection route.

Yet when Jacobson tested the animals' blood and organs, West Nile virus was evident. Although scientists are still debating how the North American alligator catches the disease, the species now appears on the official roster kept by the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis., that lists the more than 200 "species found positive for West Nile virus."

This month, biologists report that the disease has reached birds in the Caribbean. A bananaquit in Jamaica has turned up with West Nile-virus antibodies in its blood, says Peter P. Marra of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md. This bird doesn't migrate, so it must have caught the virus locally.

Because New World wildlife has not had to contend with the virus before, defenses aren't in place. Some species are experiencing what appears to be an animal version of the epidemics of smallpox and other new diseases that devastated native peoples when Europeans arrived.

Once an infamous penitentiary housing the likes of mobsters Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly, Alcatraz Island now hosts scores of nesting seabirds

In a delightful twist of fate, Alcatraz Island, once home of the infamous Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, is being taken over by large colonies of birds. Visitors' spirits will be uplifted when they see the contrast between the empty cells and crumbling walls of the old penitentiary and the vigorous seabird colonies. Before this bird renaissance, the island had a gloomy air, as you might expect in a place that for decades housed the nation's most desperate criminals. But even before the penitentiary was built, this island was a forbidding presence in the San Francisco Bay.

In 1775, Don Juan Manuel de Ayala, a lieutenant in the Spanish navy, bestowed the name of Isla de los Alcatraces, or "Island of the Pelicans," upon a nearby island, now called Yerba Buena Island. He was inspired to give it this name because it appeared to be completely covered with pelicans, but he did not attempt to land at either island, because they looked bleak and offered no shelter for his ship. Later, in 1826, a British navy surveyor unwittingly transferred the name Alcatraz Island to the place that bears this name today.

Revered and reviled, pampered and persecuted, the domestic cat (Felis catus) has stirred up passionate sentiment since it first came to five among human beings 4,000 years ago. Though it may no longer be worshipped as a god or burned as a demon, the cat continues to evoke feelings ranging from adoration to hatred. The hunting prowess that made it so valuable to farmers and sailors has landed it on the most-wanted list of some wildlife advocates who blame the world's most widespread predator for accelerating the demise of imperiled species from tiny beach mice to the majestic Florida panther.

Cats' defenders, however, exonerate them of ecological wrongdoing, some even arguing that cats won't hunt when well fed. Thousands of individuals and organizations care for feral cats in the U.S., trapping them, neutering them, then returning them to the colony. Cat advocates say the real problem is not feline but human: urban sprawl, pollution, habitat degradation and over-hunting. "Feral cats are an easy scapegoat," says Donna Wilcox, executive director of Alley Cat Allies, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that endorses "trap-neuter-return" or TNR. "It's easier to say, 'Let's wipe out all the feral cats,' than, 'Let's not wipe out forest for a new subdivision or a new mini-mall.'"

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), for one, says it recognizes that native species such as beach mice, the Lower Keys marsh rabbit, terns and other ground-nesting birds, as well as hatchling sea turtles, wouldn't be endangered if only people had managed the Earth more responsibly. But it claims that feral cats are aggravating an already desperate situation by hunting smaller creatures and possibly spreading feline leukemia and feline pan-leukemia to Florida panthers. In light of these findings, documented by staff scientists, the FWC enacted a new policy last spring calling for the humane removal of feral cats from the lands it manages.

Angie Raines, an agency spokesperson, insists that it will not be killing cats. "If there is a feral colony near where the FWC is trying to bring back ground-nesting birds and they're having a negative impact, we will work with TNR advocates and the local government to relocate the cats or fence them off," she explains. "We have to take the side of wildlife, but that doesn't mean we have to call for killing cats."