Booze and birds

Next time you uncork a bottle of wine, think about the cork and how it is responsible for saving the habitat of many important threatened bird species. I don't know why, but in spite of the thousands of corks I've popped, I have never wondered where the cork comes from? TVO provided the answer last evening. From the Portugese Cork Oak tree. There are 100,000 acres of protected cork oak in the Montado in Portugal, farmed by a few land-owners over generations. Every nine years, the entire outer bark of this tree is cut away and hauled off for processing into cork. And removing all the outer bark does not kill the tree. Amazing. Each tree provides 4,ooo corks and annual harvesting jobs for 60,000 workers. Who knew!? But equally facinating were the stories and footage of the 30 species of birds who thrive there, along with 26 species of bats. Then there are the rare wildflowers, the marshes, the frogs, deer and the Iberian Lynx. There is also a rare species of bee-eating birds found only in the Montado -- where thousands of tons of carbon monoxide are absorbed by these oaks every year.

I urge you to stay away from plastic corks because by 2000 1/4 of the cork forest had been lost because wineries were moving to plastic. And I nearly forgot about the cork oak acorns favoured by special pigs who provide sumptuous smoked ham from the region. The whole thing was beyond facinating.

In contrast to this wonderful program, I switched (very briefly) to America's Top Model. What a pathetic show. All these young girls under tremendous pressure to stay on the program. The scene where one was eliminated by Tyra Banks (really ugly legs, by the way) was nothing short of torture. The girl who was cut was devastated and began weeping and wailing. Who cares??!!

CBC radio had a facinating interview with a fellow who has written a book on the origins of the census in Canada. Until the flap about the elimination of the long form, no one gave a hoot about this guy. But the interview was illuminating to say the least. Apparently, the British started the census in Upper Canada to get rid of the French and the natives. They just categorized people as they saw fit and wiped out entire family names, replacing them with English-sounding names. Guess that didn't work out too well for them, did it!