Good news comes in a small package - with feathers
With all the really bad, no-good, horrible, awful news of the day, from disarray in the climate change talks, to confusion about Health Care Reform and whether it is really going to happen, to Wall Street giving its usual obscene end-of-the-year bonuses, to more troops being sent to Afghanistan - well, it's enough to depress even the most optimistic person. Imagine my utter delight then when, today, I ran across the story of the Limestone Leaf Warbler . This tiny bird, a previously unknown species, has been discovered in the forests of Vietnam and Laos. It is a yellow and green bird that was first sighted in 1994, but at that time it was thought that it was merely a subspecies of the Sulphur-breasted Warbler, a well-documented species in the area. Now, however, studies of the bird's morphology, DNA, and vocalizations have confirmed that it is a distinct species. Not only is this a "new" bird, but unlike so many recently discovered species that have only been found w...