Birds of a Propeller
“The birds left Bavaria on the second Tuesday in August. They took off from an airfield, approximated a few sloppy laps, and then, such are miracles, began to follow a microlight aircraft, as though it were one of them. The contraption—as much pendulum as plane—reared and dipped as its pilot, a Tyrolian biologist in an olive-drab flight suit and amber shooting glasses, tugged on the steering levers. Behind him, in the rear seat, a young woman with a blond ponytail called to the birds, in German, through a bullhorn. As the microlight receded west into the haze, the birds chasing behind, an armada of cars and camper vans sped off in pursuit.” Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker on the long flight to teach an endangered Ibis species to migrate. Helicopter Parents. “Our devastation of nature is so extreme that reversing even a small part of it requires painstaking, quixotic efforts.”