so that's why their little hearts beat so fast
from Grist:
It's hard out here for a gorgeted puffleg. The hummingbird species with the fabulous name was just discovered in southwestern Colombia, where farmers slash and burn 1,235 acres of cloud-forest habitat every year to grow coca, the raw ingredient in cocaine. That's bad news for a species that bird-conservation expert Andr Weller calls "the most spectacular discovery of a new hummingbird taxon during the last decade or more." Ornithologists are urging the Colombian government to create a 494,000-acre nature preserve for the safety of pufflegs, so named for the cottonball-like plumage above their legs. Cute! Says Ian Davidson of Birdlife International, "To go undiscovered for so long, the bird's range must be extremely small and fragile -- hence conservation action is undoubtedly a priority." And if forest preservation helps out other feathered folk, all the better; Colombia houses more than 1,800 bird species, the largest variety in the world.
sources:
San Francisco Chronicle
Planet Ark
A photo of the gorgeted puffleg
Comments
Gates walks into a bar bathroom where two young men and a girl are doing coke off the chrome plated towel dispenser.
Gates - " I don't think you know this, buy you are killing the gorgeted puffleg by doing that."
Hipsters - " Uh, we're trying to do coke here."
p.s. to the snicker word discussion -- how about both gorgeted and puffleg?