And don't just buy the Duck Stamp--DISPLAY it. Get a plastic cover and let it dangle from your spotting scope or on your jacket. Let people know that birders are willing to support habitat acquisition.
I've just started reading "The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession," and was dismayed to read that Sandy Komito got his first rare bird on his record-setting year at Patagonia Lake State Park in Arizona, and tried (the author doesn't say whether he was successful) to duck out of the $5.00 park entrance fee. Who the heck does he think PAYS for protecting that land and the habitat so that a Nutting's Flycatcher can have some place to show up when it wanders north of its range? This man who was willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to jet around the continent seeing the most birds anyone had ever seen in a year was unwilling to pay a lousy $5 to ensure the enduring existence of the park where he saw his first rare bird of the year? How badly that speaks of the sport of birding. Laura Erickson Duluth, MN Producer, "For the Birds" radio program <http://www.lauraerickson.com/> There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of birds. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature--the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter. --Rachel Carson
