I’ve spending an awful lot of time thinking about the birds no one sees. That’s not something birders, or anyone, ponders often. We like to think about our lists, talk about the birds we’ve seen and the ones others have seen that we just missed. We don’t talk about the birds that no one ever sees, mostly because we don’t know anything about them.

The next you find yourself in Vermont to visit Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, be sure to spend a little time checking out Woodstock. And to help you on your exploration of the town, pick up the 32-page New Birth of Freedom: A Walk Through the Civil War Home Front in Woodstock, Vermont, at the park.

When it comes to construction skills, male Anhingas are slackers. Oh, they’re good at pulling together nesting materials, but that’s about it. Instead of turning the sticks, twigs, and leafy greenery they collect into a nest for their mates, they stash the materials in trees and let the females build the actual nest.

Students of National Park Service history are well-familiar with the National Park Service Organic Act, particularly the section of it that reads that the agency's primary mandate is, "....to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein..." But there should be a caveat inserted, one that permits the agency to look away from that mandate.