When we cleaned out the Wood Duck boxes last month, we noticed this weird oval depression around one of the boxes. (The ice within the oval seemed thinner....)

Anyone have any idea what might have caused it?

In advance of my Bird Watcher column about feathers yesterday, I asked who can identify the feathers on the dust jacket of this rare book.

The answer, from renowned feather expert Pepper Tail, is that the feathers on the James Bond book "are fanciful. Perhaps from unknown species in Goldfinger's diabolical aviary, but not from birds known to science."

My column in The Record today is in praise of feathers.

(Can you identify these three feathers found in Northern New Jersey? (Answer at the end of the column, below.)

You can download it here:

Download TheRecordBergenEdition_20210204_LF03_0

Or read it here:

Don't miss my free Zoom talk for the Linnaean Society of New York City on Tuesday, Feb. 9, at 7 p.m.

The talk will feature three rare birds that the real James Bond collected for science in the West Indies (including one now feared extinct) and an ornithologist/spy or two, notably the American Museum of Natural History's James Chapin.

After the talk, I'll chat with Dr. Joseph Wunderle of BirdsCaribbean, who has some amazing stories to tell.

(He once had lunch with Bond, and it changed his life.)

The details on how to register are here.

More about BirdsCaribbean here.

(That's the Cuban Tody from the cover of the 1936 Birds of the Indies above.)