NEWS
May 23, 2012 | By Sandy Bauers, Inquirer Staff Writer
At 5:30 a.m., the rain was letting up, but it was still dark as the two men began their rounds of Center City's skyscrapers. They started with a particular alcove, bordered on three sides by glass. Pretty. But not for birds. "They get trapped into this angle," said Stephen Maciejewski, scanning the sidewalk for victims. Confused by all the reflections, "they don't know to turn around. " So they fly into the glass, and they die. As they walked from building to building, he and Keith Russell, Audubon Pennsylvania's science and outreach coordinator in Philadelphia, checked spots where they usually find birds - along sidewalks, behind signs, in stairwells, under cars, atop ledges.
SPORTS
May 23, 2012 | Rich Hofmann, Daily News Columnist
LYONS, TEXAS (population: 40) is where Eagles running-backs coach Ted Williams was born, one of six children. The house where he was delivered is now under water, the site of the biggest man-made lake in the state. It was 1943. It was the age of Jim Crow, fully 2 decades before the passage of major civil-rights legislation by the Congress. "My father wanted to make sure we didn't grow up in the South," Williams said. "He felt we would have a better chance in the West. " He went back a couple of times as a kid and remembered, "You talk about a guy who hated Lyons, Texas.
SPORTS
May 21, 2012 | John Smallwood
This will make the stomachs of most Philadelphia sports fans turn. The New York Giants on Wednesday unveiled the championship rings they will get for winning Super Bowl XLVI. It's a nice ring – gaudy as heck, like all Super Bowl rings, but nice. The ring, which was designed by Tiffany & Co., is stacked with diamonds and has four Vince Lombardi trophies to represent the franchise's four Super Bowl titles. It also has sapphires surrounding an "ny" and forming a "Big" blue ring around the top. On the inside of the ring, the words "Finish" and "All in" are engraved.Those were the Giants' catchphrases on their amazing run of 2011.
NEWS
May 19, 2012 | By Virginia A. Smith, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Growing up in Broomall, Jesse Grantham remembers two unscripted moments that played an outsized role in shaping the career he would choose and the person he would become. Moment No. 1: He's 8, in the car with his parents, on the way to pick up the babysitter. Once there, he looks up and sees a purple martin rockin' and a-rollin' through an old sycamore tree. He knows about these aerial acrobats from his bird books, but up close, as they dive-bomb for flying insects, they're wildly entertaining.
NEWS
May 5, 2012 | By Marlene Zuk
For those who think spring is all about robins arriving, window cleaning, or crocuses budding, I have two words for you: ant sex. Now, I know what you're thinking: Those tiny black creatures marching relentlessly toward the sugar bowl are all infertile females who have no interest in sex. This is true. But when the days lengthen and the earth warms, the thoughts of a select class of ants turn to passion. An ant queen produces all the ants in a colony. The vast majority are sterile female workers.
NEWS
May 5, 2012 | By Sam Adams, FOR THE INQUIRER
Union Transfer boasts some of the best sight lines in the city, but even with the stage at Thursday's Andrew Bird concert in full view, you might have been tempted to crane your neck to see where he was hiding his orchestra. Even when he was alone at the microphone — or rather, microphones — with only a violin in his hands, Bird used loop pedals to layer swooping solos on top of sprightly pizzicato, seamlessly integrating snatches of styles ranging from the Wild West to the Middle East.
NEWS
May 4, 2012 | Dear Abby
DEAR ABBY: I am a professional ornithologist (bird expert) with a substantial record of accomplishments — books, scientific papers, blog, website, consultant work, etc. My hometown has held a bird festival for more than a decade and each year it features a main speaker at the dinner. My expertise and experience far outshine that of any of the speakers they have invited by a considerable margin. I am well-known in town, but have not been asked to speak. I talked to the festival board members, and they say I haven't been deliberately excluded, but they didn't give me any reason why I have been ignored.
SPORTS
May 1, 2012 | ALEX LEE, Daily News Staff Writer
WITH A CHORUS of boos raining down from the Radio City Music Hall crowd, Matt Schucker couldn't help but smirk. Luckily, Schucker, an Eagles fan, had expected this from the Giants-heavy horde, so he gathered himself and announced the Eagles' fourth-round selection of the NFL draft — Georgia cornerback Brandon Boykin. Schucker, 28, who lives in Lexington, Va., but grew up in Lancaster, was the winner of an Eagles Facebook promotion that sent him and three friends to New York City for an all-expenses-paid trip to the draft.
SPORTS
April 26, 2012
THE TRADE of @pick_six22 returned a seventh-rounder. It's the most significant return Asante Samuel has made in years. The Eagles traded Samuel to the Falcons for the 229th overall pick in this weekend's draft, apparently because a bag of hammers was way too much to ask. The hammers hit a lot harder than Samuel ever did. The Eagles thought they had solved their secondary problems for the long term when they signed Samuel as...
SPORTS
April 25, 2012 | BY LES BOWEN, bowenl@phillynews.com
IT IS NFL draft week and this is an Eagles story that plops Jerry Robinson's name into the first sentence. If you don't know where we're headed, please turn to the features section. You don't belong here. In Philadelphia, some names or phrases serve as shorthand for sore subjects, no explanation required. Joe Carter. Leon Stickle. Chico Ruiz stole home. Moses Malone traded to the Bullets. Von "5 for 1" Hayes. Every NFL draft week, "Jerry Robinson" invariably goes at the end of the sentence that starts, "The Eagles haven't taken a linebacker in the first round since 1979, when they chose . . . " Everyone knows this, bemoans this, laments this.