Birders in Arkansas are talking about bird food--not the schlock we put out on the patio, but the natural food sources birds have used for millennia. Their discussion is at http://birding.aba.org/maillist/AR . We have reached a point where only elderly observers remember seeing clouds of fireflies in the city, bugs swarming around porch lights and streetlights, gobs of dead insects on the screens underneath the car's hood, etc. I recall moving into Columbus's Clintonville in 1990, when on many a summer evening I walked down to the school, where nighthawks hunted insects in the lights of the local schoolyard, buzzing as they harvested the mosquitoes I attracted. Too often removal of local vegetation is followed by mists of chemical pesticides. Nearly all nighthawks are seen here now only during their quick migratory fall returns from remote areas in Canada to South America, and butterflies are getting harder and harder to find. It's hard to say exactly what ripping the web of life will bring, but birders will be among the first to notice it. Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Please consider joining our Society, at www.ohiobirds.org/site/membership.php. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: listserv.miamioh.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]