What they found, as they report in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is that the host bird's real chicks are pawns in a protection racket of a sort the Sicilian Mafia would be proud to have invented.The victims of the racket are prothonotary warblers.
The emperor's collaborator and instrument in every important act of his reign, Pietro reached the apogee of his power in 1246, when he was appointed prothonotary (chief court official) and logothete (chancellor) of the kingdom of Sicily.
You're dependent on weather, geography, time of day — if you miss the prothonotary warbler, there isn't a midnight showing.
To be in the Atchafalaya is to float among trees under silently flying blue herons, to see the pileated woodpecker, to hope to see an ivorybill, to hear the prothonotary warbler.
I said, 'Bye, Libbie,' and dashed in to post a message".On eBirdsnyc, a listserv for reporting bird sightings around the city, he wrote: "Prothonotary warbler 40th and 5th!!!" He was so excited, he said, "It was like I was typing with oven mitts".
Also starring in the film: the prothonotary warbler, ruby-crowned kinglet, olive-sided flycatcher, Eastern screech owl and dozens of other birds.
Prothonotary warblers (pronounced proh-THON-uh-ter-ee) are rare migratory birds that are usually just passing through on the way to winter in warm places like West Indies.
There's a special buzz when a prothonotary is spotted.
There's a rare prothonotary warbler in Wildflower Meadow.
And yes, history buffs, a prothonotary warbler figured in the tangle of memories and claims in the Alger Hiss case.
When Monsignor Dalla Villa was moved to St. Agnes last year, Cardinal Edward Egan, the archbishop of New York, arranged for the pope to name him a prothonotary apostolic, the highest honorary title for a monsignor, Msgr. Eugene V. Clark said.
