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Snow Owls

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发表于 2-17-2014 10:34:58 | 只看该作者 回帖奖励 |倒序浏览 |阅读模式
Darryl Fears, A Snowy-Owl Bonanza, Thanks to a Little, Stubby-Legged Arctic Rodent: The Lemming. Washington Post, Feb 17, 2014.
www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... 4193bb84_story.html

Note:
(a) lemming
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming
(herbivorous; subniveal; "do not hibernate * * * They remain active, finding food by burrowing through the snow and using grasses clipped and stored in advance;" They are solitary animals by nature, meeting only to mate and then going their separate ways; section 2 Behavior)

The table shows several genera: The genus Lemmus ("true lemming;" pictured above the table) does not change color in winter, but the genus Dicrostonyx ("collared lemming;" see, eg,
greenland collared lemming dicrostonyx groenlandicus. Superstock, undated (Stock Photo #4141-27118).
www.superstock.com/stock-photos-images/4141-27118
), with a whitish ring around the neck, turns white in winter.
(b)
(i) bonanza (n): "a very large amount <a bonanza of sympathy>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bonanza
(ii) bonanza. Online Etymology Dictionary, undated.
www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bonanza

(c) Lemming population boom "probably gave rise to what scientists are calling the largest snowy-owl irruption in at least a half-century. * * * last summer it rose off the charts on Canada’s Bylot Island in the Nunavut territory. Snowy-owl pairs that raise chicks on lemmings flocked there, according to Jean-Francois Therrien, a research biologist at the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary for raptors in Kempton, Pa, who studies the owls."
(i) irrupt (vi): "of a natural population :  to undergo a sudden upsurge in numbers especially when natural ecological balances and checks are disturbed"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irrupt
The Latin root of this verb is the same in second syllable as --but different in the first syllable from--that of "erupt."
(ii) Bylot Island
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bylot_Island
(named for the Arctic explorer Robert Bylot [an Englishman], who was the first European to sight it in 1616)
(iii) Hawk Mountain Sanctuary
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawk_Mountain_Sanctuary
(iv) Kempton, Pennsylvania
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kempton,_Pennsylvania
(a census-designated place in Albany Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania; As of the 2010 census, the population was 169 residents)
(c) A snow owl was described as "looked like it was living very high on the hog.”

high on the hog. The Phrase Finder, undated
www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/high-on-the-hog.html
(This and similar phrases "aren't found in print in any form until the 20th century, and then in the USA rather than England")
(d) "When snowy owls are away, lemmings play."

The original is: "When the cat is away, the mice will play - 1607"
Let the cat out of the bag. The Phrase Finder, undated.
www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/let-the-cat-out-of-the-bag.html
(e) "Gilles Gauthier, a professor of biology at Université Laval in Quebec City"

Laval University
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laval_University
(French: Université Laval; the oldest centre of education in Canada (4th oldest in North America); founded in 1663 by François de Montmorency-Laval, a member of the House of Laval and the first [Roman Catholic] Bishop of New France; public)
(f) "Even the texture of snowfall [in the Arctic] has changed, from fluffy to soggy and wet. It ices over when temperatures drop, encasing the vegetation that lemmings covet"

ice (vi): "to become covered with ice —often used with up or over"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ice
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