I saw Bill Hilton's post about the Wall Street Journal article very soon after I had thrown out my printout of the online article (I had a lot of time to clean off my desk while waiting to speak with Gateway tech support, sigh). Based on a quick glance at the link that Kent Fiala posted -- http://www.lauraerickson.com/Birds/Conservation/WSJDistortions1.html -- indicates that Laura Erickson quoted exactly the points from James Sterba's article that she wished to rebut (I mean no disrespect, but she would not be the first person in history to quote only part of something.). However, I've recovered my printout from the wastebasket, in case anyone would like to see the actual article in its entirety. I initially read the WSJ article after my husband told me about, quickly dismissed it for reasons that are strictly my own (i.e., non-scientific, doubtless anthropomorphizing, etc.), but I did take the time to check out the online version in case anyone else was interested in reading it. (I think I did this before the digest version of CarolinaBirds was available, when I felt comfortable posting to CarolinaBirds, being a "recreational" birder rather than someone with scientific knowledge. I suspect that I need to revert to receiving the non-digest version, as I'm having a lot of trouble sorting out the posts from the signature lines, but I'm sure that's just something I need to tweak in MS Outlook -- "ya can drag us Netscape Messenger users to MS Outlook, but ya can't make us think"!) I'll see if I can re-access the WSJ archives for that article, as I think that only subscribers can access it. (In any event, I still have the "recovered" printout; no date or time appeared on the printout, but the header is 12/27/02.) Anne Lurie NE Raleigh alurie@nc.rr.com