Soldiers keep tabs on Iraq’s wildlife
The life of the soldier can be one of endless boredom interrupted by bouts of extreme danger and stress. So soldiers welcome distractions from the tedium of barracks life and some have chosen to pass their time through the observation of local nature.
One of the most well-known soldiers that blogged about what he observed is Jonathan Trouern-Trend, an Army National Guard sergeant who was deployed at Balad’s Camp Anaconda between February 2004 and February 2005. While pulling guard duty for a halted convoy across the Kuwaiti border into Iraq, he is stunned when “I’m lying on the ground with my eye on some guy racing around in a pickup truck, wondering if he’s going to take a potshot at us (which would have been suicidal), while a pair of crested larks were not even 10 feet from me, the male displaying and dancing around.”Michael Yon, a former Green Beret who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004, alternately named the house sparrows “French Fry Catchers” and “Saddam’s Sparrows”.
How many birders are there among American forces and contractors in Iraq? Although that’s one category of statistics the military does not keep, Trouern-Trend recounts meeting at least a dozen on his walks around base, and he has opened an (as yet modest) “Iraq Fauna Wiki,” a Web site on which anyone can contribute or edit articles on Iraq’s wildlife.
I hope everyone has a moment of remembrance this Memorial Day as you enjoy the freedoms on this national holiday.
Website list:
Birding Babylon
http://birdingbabylon.blogspot.com/
Iraq Fauna Wiki
http://iraqfauna.wikispaces.com/
Michael Yon’s Online Magazine
http://michaelyon.blogspot.com/
List of Birds of Iraq
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_of_Iraq
Iraq Birds
http://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/links/links.jsp?page=l_mid_iq
Nature Iraq
http://www.natureiraq.org/Eng/home.html
Source: http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/09/2001474
0 comments:
Post a Comment