Re: "DINOSAUR SOCIAL WARMTH"

["Ray Stanford" <dinotracker@earthlink.net>]

    Ronald Orenstein informed us from his book, "Songbirds: Celebrating
Nature's Voices":

"Kinglets, : Winter Wrens, : Brown Creepers and : European Treecreepers, :
Long-tailed Tits and Bushtits huddle together for warmth in winter roosts.
The need to roost can be so great that it is worth risking a bird's life.
Owen Knorr once found over 100 : Pygmy Nuthatches huddled in the cavity of
a pine tree. The birds were so closely packed together that some had
suffocated."

    Indeed, Michael L. Smith (who took that wonderful photo of the Eastern
bluebirds packed together in a hollowed-out log) told me just last weekend
that in the same log where he photographed the birds, two suffocated that
winter. :-(

    Ray Stanford