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From: no-junk-email@ns.net (Kathy Brunetti -- see sig)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Wash. Bio. Surv. and Smithsonian Magazine
Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 18:43:58 -0700

The Sept. 1999 Smithosonian Magazine has an article about bird banding. It includes this:

Bird banding even has its own urban legend, a 70-year-old misprint that has gained new credence, thanks to the Internet. Last year, several newspapers and wire services reported variations ont he folowing tale, whhich was circulating widely on the World Wide Web: the government, they claimed, had changed the inscription on bird bands from "Wash. Biol. Surv."--an abbreviaiton for Washington Biological Survey--because on some bands "Biol" was misspelled as "Boil." A camper (sometimes a hunter or a farmer) supposedly wrote to say he found a crow (or a coot or a vulture) wearing the band, followed the directions to wash, boil, and serve, but the bird still tasted horrible. Tautin [head of the U. S. Bird Banding Laboratory] tried to track down the origin of the story and found that in the 1920s a batch of bands did indeed carry the misspelled abbreviaiton. While some banders at the time were afraid folks might misinterpret the inscription, Tautin can find no evidence that anyone actually did.

Kathy Brunetti