Birds of a Feather Flocking Together
Though they don't really flock together, or even know one another, but the renown Chicago artisan Tony Fitzpatrick and Cornell University Ornithologist Kevin J. McGowan have much in common. Both of these dudes are obviously Irishmen and they both make their living from their obsession with birds! And both have a particular (some might say peculiar) affinity for crows or starlings.
Saint Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of birders, (featured at left with Saint Clare and chatting with some of his lovie-dovies) noted that Fitzpatrick has painted thousands of bird portraits throughout his career and likewise, McGowan has observed and studied thousands of birds, beginning at childhood.
McGowan, being a behavioral ecologist, tries to get into the bird brains of crows, better known to Saint Francis, (perhaps the original "birder") as Corvus brachyrhynchos.
McGowan says the American Crow is a very "cooperative breeder." They tend to stick around and help raise their siblings children and stuff like that. Of course, if a member of the bird family gets separated he or she will "make do with something else" and "hang out with another species" (of birds, of course, and certainly not felines). McGowan cooed and wooed his bird knowledge to C. Claiborne Ray, a writer who has published in the New York Times.
Whether these two gentlemen have seen Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," or Matthew Modine, in "Birdy," or listen to "A Flock of Seagulls" or "The Counting Crows" remain unanswered questions. But now that the inquiries are out and about on the world wide web, perhaps one of these gentlemen will someday make a comment and answer on this www.SaintsforSinners.com blog subsidiary. If anyone wants to encourage Kevin McGowan to post a reply, his e mail address is KJMZ@Cornell.edu.
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