A Ray of Sunshine in Columbia

What a terrible week for news. North Korea appears to have tested a nuclear device. Murdered children are buried in Pennsylvania and Ontario. A report suggests that over 600,000 Iraqis have died since the US invaded that country. Gunfire erupts in a Toronto-area shopping mall. A baseball player crashes a light plane into a New York apartment building.

Amidst all this sadness, there was a bright news story -- a new species of bird has been discovered in the cloud forest of Columbia. A joint Columbian-British team of scientists announced the discovery of the Yariguies Brush Finch, a fist-sized bird with a reddish plume and bright yellow feathers. The bird is considered "near threatened", but its discovery has already led to the Columbian government setting aside some of the forest to be protected.

The one sad thing about the whole thing is the back story about the bird's names. The Yariguies tribe used to live in the region in which the bird was found. According to some stories, the tribe committed mass suicide in the sixteenth century rather than submit to Spanish colonial rule.

To see a picture of the bird (and to get more information about the discovery), check out the following link to the National Geographic website:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061010-new-bird.html?source=rss