s well as gardeners are on the move. Birds with the highest risk of exposure include waterfowl, such as brant geese, which have been known to eat large quantities of pesticide-treated foliage. Seed-eating songbirds, because they are attracted to pesticide granules and treated seeds, are also at high risk. A third hard-hit group includes scavengers as well as raptors such as red-tailed hawks or great-horned owls, which often feed on pesticide-poisoned prey. To help reduce the pesticide threat, the National Audubon Society has launched BirdCast, a cooperative program with Cornell University's Laboratory of Ornithology, Clemson University's Radar Ornithology Laboratory, the Academy of Natural Sciences, and Geo-Marine, a private engineering firm. Employing state-of-the-art NEXRAD radar and reports from citizen-scientists, the program will use the Internet to post detailed radar images of bird migrations in the Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., metropolitan areas. The site (www.BirdSource.org/Birdcast/) will tell what pesticides to avoid during peak migrations and how to make your backyard more hospitable to birds. The site will also provide information on local pest threats and the safest ways to manage them. More important, thousands of birders will get the chance to contribute to the project by verifying the species that visit their backyards or favorite birding spots. They will then be able to enter their sightings into a database and see running tallies of species almost instantly. Kicking the pesticide habit isn't mission impossible. Just ask one of the nation's more than 6,000 certified organic farmers, or the City of Arcata, California, which, after 15 years of using nontoxic pest controls, banned all pesticide use on city property as of this past February. ...
