Transatlantic ornithology lost a unique practitioner with the death of Raymond Joseph O'Connor on 29 September 2005, from cancer. In his native British Isles and adopted North America, Raymond made original contributions that have helped shape modern ornithology on three continents. He joined the AOU in 1975 and became an Elective Member in 1988 and a Fellow in 2005.

Born on 20 January 1944, in Dublin, Republic of Ireland, Raymond was educated at church schools in Ireland and remained a devout Catholic throughout his life; his religion gave him strength and comfort through his terminal illness. He first became interested in birds at the age of 12, when, as he watched a small bird methodically weaving fibers into a nest, he and the bird made eye contact, a connection he had never experienced before. Birding remained a hobby while he completed a B.Sc. in Physics and Mathematics at University College in Dublin in 1965. After working for three years on a Ph.D. in Physics at Birkbeck College in London, a program to allow physical and biological scientists to interchange careers facilitated his transformation into an ornithologist; he moved to the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at Oxford as a Nuffield Foundation Biological Scholar. He studied growth and development of birds for his D.Phil. in Zoology (1971) under Christopher Perrins. His unusual combination of laboratory and field experiments led to the landmark Growth and Development of Birds (1984), which remained the key reference on the topic until quite recently. Oxford contemporaries recall his somewhat intimidating intelligence, exemplified during coffee breaks when he would absentmindedly solve a Rubik's cube while carrying on a conversation to which he appeared to be paying his complete attention. He worked long hours, built necessary equipment himself, and always retained a clear vision of where the work was taking him. Though clearly brilliant, he was approachable and a great conversationalist. He was a mentor to students and colleagues, always willing to advise and critique with kindly precision-a facility he retained throughout his career.

He held a lectureship in Animal Ecology and Behaviour at Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, from 1972 to 1975. His departure for a similar position at University College Bangor, North Wales (1975-1978), was precipitated by the escalation of violence in Northern Ireland; in particular, the shooting of a colleague coming out of church "just because of his religious persuasion" made a deep impression. In both positions, Raymond continued his research on avian growth and development but also moved, in collaboration with colleagues, into new areas-including, for example, community structure in intertidal systems. In 1987, Raymond became Director of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and brought his unique combination of quantitative, biological, and personal skills to reshape it into the world-leading organization it is today. He oversaw the computerization of clerical records of populations, nest records, and banding, all data gathered by amateurs and organized by professionals. His recognition that all aspects of the BTO's data collection could be integrated to answer critical population questions, and his powerful advocacy of the BTO's need for the requisite computer power, set the stage for national-scale analyses of bird population dynamics not previously possible and rarely contemplated. The seminal paper in Ardea ("Pattern and process in Great Tit populations in Britain," 1980) showed how information gathered by volunteers for BTO programs could be corroborated by, and in some cases extend, the understanding from numerous intensive professional studies on the species. It also showed how the value of the data in each separate program is greatly improved by comparison with data in the others, so that the value of the whole exceeded the sum of the parts. This paper, those on other species, and Raymond's participation in the 1983 "Birds and Man" Symposium in Johannesburg, were influential in establishing the national Bird Populations Data Bank and Avian Demography Unit as a South African version of the BTO.

While at the BTO, Raymond applied the Trust's emerging capacity for integrated population analysis to agricultural birds, leading to his 1986 book Farming and Birds, written with Michael Shrubb. This work demonstrated the previously unrecognized deleterious effects of modern intensive farming practices on a wide variety of birds.

In 1987, as his BTO role moved further away from research and into administration, Raymond accepted a faculty position in the Department of Wildlife Ecology at the University of Maine in Orono, where, among many other projects, he strove to apply the BTO approach to U.S. data. Volunteer bird programs in North America evolved differently, in a heterogeneous combination of nongovernmental and government agencies, with the unfortunate result that North America still lags behind the United Kingdom and South Africa in bringing together all these diverse data sets to achieve continental-scale understanding of bird population dynamics. Raymond chose the best-organized bird population data available at the continental scale, the Breeding Bird Survey (BBS), and collaborated with colleagues in a broad range of other disciplines to apply BBS data to geographically and temporally large questions of interactions between biodiversity, the physical environment, and human activities. His last book (Atlas of Climate Change Effects on Common Birds in 150 Bird Species of the Eastern United States, with S. N. Matthews, L. R. Iverson, and A. M. Prasad, 2004) provides insight into the power of this approach to answer some of the questions now faced by contemporary ornithology and society. Much of his groundbreaking work was published in reports and in non-ornithological journals. (Apart from reviews, only three of his publications since coming to the United States were in bird journals.) This approach raised the credibility of ornithological data among practitioners of other fields but has not had the reciprocal effect of broadening the outlook of most ornithologists or increasing their appreciation of their discipline's value to society in general.

Wildlife Demography: Analysis of Sex, Age, and Count Data.-John R. Skalski, Kristen E. Ryding, and Joshua J. Millspaugh. 2005. Elsevier-Academic, San Diego, California, xiii + 636 pp., 90 text figures. ISBN 0-12-0088773-8. Cloth, $69.95.-Collection of data on the age and sex composition of birds harvested by state and federal agencies has a long history, whereas less effort has been focused on estimation via capture-recapture, distance sampling, and other procedures. Yet in reading the literature on wildlife statistics, one would obtain the opposite impression, with most of the advances since the 1960s having been in areas of capture-recapture, tag recovery, and distance sampling (e.g., Otis et al. 1978, Burnham et al. 1980, Brownie et al. 1985, Pollock et al. 1990, Buckland et al. 1993, Williams et al. 2002). By contrast, there has been relatively little progress in the analysis of count-based data since the development of these methods between the 1940s and 1960s. Until recently, little formal statistical theory existed for many of these methods, so that variance estimates, confidence intervals, and assumption tests were generally unavailable. This book attempts to remedy the situation.

Chapter 2 provides an excellent review of population dynamics, especially of harvest theory, which is important because many of the data sources later considered derive from hunter and angler harvests. Subsequent chapters cover count-based approaches (direct counts, harvest surveys, age, and sex ratios) but also include methods such as capture-recapture and distance sampling for comparison and assumption testing. Chapters cover estimation of sex ratios (chapter 3), productivity and survival (chapters 4 and 5), harvest and harvest morality (chapter 6), population change (chapter 7), population indices (chapter 8), and abundance (chapter 9). Chapter 10 provides examples using multiple approaches to estimate parameters. Despite the chapter title, most of these are not "integrated" analyses. A notable exception is a study of Ringnecked Pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) in which change-in-ratio, catch-effort, and capture-recapture data were incorporated into a single likelihood, providing more precision (and fewer assumptions) than each method separately. The material in chapter 8 on finite sampling is very well written, but because these concepts apply generally, coverage earlier in the book would have been better. A useful appendix on "Statistical Concepts and Theory" covers maximum-likelihood estimation, interval estimation, hypothesis testing, and other topics. However, I could find no mention in the book of bias, accuracy, or precision-which is surprising, given the fundamental importance of these concepts to estimator assumptions.

The authors have done a thorough job of gathering many disparate methods together and providing a comprehensive description of data structures, statistical models (including likelihood formulas where possible), and assumptions. In several cases (e.g., chapter 3), they have also incorporated detection probabilities into the statistical models, so that, given appropriate data, parameters of biological interest can be estimated without making critical and untestable assumptions. Each chapter closes with a schematic decision tree, which can be used to guide selection of an appropriate sampling-estimation approach.

Unfortunately, few of the methods described here can provide, by themselves, reliable inference on populations. In contrast to methods such as capture-recapture, distance sampling, and detection-adjusted visual counts, most do not provide data that can be used to avoid untenable assumptions, or test those that cannot be avoided. In chapter 3 (pp. 65-66), the authors note that "in the absence of auxiliary information about detection rates [sex ratio] is not estimable...[so that]...in populations with different detection probabilities for males and females, an unbiased estimate...is not possible." However, sex-biased detection is common, and I question the value of a methodology that is not robust to an assumption that cannot be tested. Likewise, many of the methods described for harvest mortality (chapter 6, p. 287) "require the detection process to be stationary before, during and after the periods of harvest....[but] the data usually collected by these techniques are insufficient alone to assess the validity of [these assumptions]." More serious is the use of vertical life-table (VLT) analyses to estimate age-specific survival and other parameters (chapter 5). Here, restrictive assumptions are required, including stationarity (λ = 1) and stable age distribution (SAD), which are seldom true in practice, especially in harvested populations. Unfortunately, these assumptions cannot be tested with the most common data structures (e.g., single, time-specific age distributions, as obtained via harvest surveys). Finally, it is not true (p. 163) that the assumption of age stability can be relaxed if the population is at SAD for a portion of the year. The SAD assumption is related to the fact that time-specific age distributions are, by definition, a mixture of ages from several cohorts, and this mixture only reflects age-specific survival when the age distribution is both stable and stationary between years.

One of the more reality-defying aspects of President Bush's position on the war in Iraq is his insistence that we're winning.

That was a central theme at yesterday's press conference. Here's the transcript .

"Absolutely, we're winning," Bush said. "As a matter of fact, my view is the only way we lose in Iraq is if we leave before the job is done."

With the body counts soaring, the country descending deeper into civil war and the central government consistently unable to assert itself, how can he call this winning?

The answer: It's becoming increasingly clear that Bush sees the war in Iraq in very simple terms. As he himself said, he believes that the only way to lose is to leave. Therefore anything else is winning -- anything else at all.

Even if no progress is being made -- even if things are getting worse, rather than better -- simply staying is winning. So we're winning.

Bush expanded on this principle in a fascinating, one-hour Oval Office interview yesterday afternoon with a half-dozen conservative journalists.

One of the attendees was Michael Barone of U.S. News, and usnews.com last night Web-published the transcript as well as the audio . The National Review, whose Byron York attended, published the transcript this morning.

Even though the session was mostly on the record, Bush seemed looser than he usually does in interviews. The result was a slew of disjointed, sometimes not particularly intelligible, but sometimes deeply telling insights into his thinking about the war. It's a heckuva read.

For example, Bush said he owes his conviction that leaving equals losing to Gen. John P. Abizaid, the Central Command chief who oversees military operations in the Middle East.

And regardless of his recent public attempts at semantic backtracking, Bush made it clear to this group of supporters that "stay the course" remains his strategy.

Here's Bush, in his opening remarks:

"Abizaid, who I think is one of the really great thinkers, John Abizaid -- I don't know if you've ever had a chance to talk to him, he's a smart guy -- he came up with this construct: If we leave, they will follow us here. That's really different from other wars we've been in. If we leave, okay, so they suffer in other parts of the world, used to be the old mantra. This one is different. This war is, if they leave, they're coming after us. As a matter of fact, they'll be more emboldened to come after us. They will be able to find more recruits to come after us.

"Abizaid clearly sees this struggle -- he sees the effects of victory in Iraq as having a major impact on other parts of the Middle East. He also sees the reciprocal of that, a defeat -- just leaving -- the only defeat is leaving, is letting things fall into chaos and letting al Qaeda have a safe haven."

As for "stay the course"? Said Bush: "This stuff about 'stay the course' -- stay the course means, we're going to win. Stay the course does not mean that we're not going to constantly change."

Part of the problem with Bush's equation is that it fails to take into account that the war in Iraq is more than just a war between the U.S. and the terrorists.

If you see Iraq as purelyU.S. vs. Al Qaeda, then it can indeed be hard to see a withdrawal as anything but a terrible defeat.

Peter Bergen partly channels that view in a New York Times op-ed today. He writes: "A total withdrawal from Iraq would play into the hands of the jihadist terrorists. As Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, made clear shortly after 9/11 in his book 'Knights Under the Prophet's Banner,' Al Qaeda's most important short-term strategic goal is to seize control of a state, or part of a state, somewhere in the Muslim world."

But Iraq is notU.S. vs. Al Qaeda. It's primarily a civil war now. The U.S. occupation is radicalizing Iraqis, most of whom say they want us out. And as that National Intelligence Estimate released last month states, the Iraq war has actually fueled, not slowed, the terror movement.

So would withdrawal from Iraq leave behind a failed state in which Al Qaeda could thrive? Would the terrorists follow us home?

Or would the opposite be true? Perhaps an American withdrawal is the only chance for Iraq to put itself back together. Perhaps the first step in winning the ideological war against terrorists would be abandoning such an easily demonized position, and instead modeling the principles of peace, freedom, and respect for Islamic people that we talk about so much.

Is there a middle ground between the "leaving equals losing" and "leaving equals winning"?

As it happens, Bergen proposes one in his op-ed today: "America should abandon its pretensions that it can make Iraq a functioning democracy and halt the civil war. Instead, we should focus on a minimalist definition of our interests in Iraq, which is to prevent a militant Sunni jihadist mini-state from emerging and allowing Al Qaeda to regroup.

GUARD CIVIL SUPPORT TEAMS GROW IN NUMBER WHILE THEIR RESPONSIBILITIES EVOLVE BEYOND THE ORIGINAL INTENT

The water sparkles in Baltimore's celebrated Inner Harbor as tourists meander past the 150-year-old Navy ship USS Constellation and the World War Il submarine Torsfe, and seals frolic at the entrance to the National Aquarium.

But to Lt. Col. Bill Stevenson, there's a grim vision behind the bustling restaurants, crowded souvenir shops and prosperous office towers of this urban renaissance.

In Colonel Stevenson's mind's eye, the area is deserted. To the southeast, the harbor's cargo terminals lie obliterated by an enormous bomb blast. Or perhaps the cranes and warehouses are still intact but rendered lifeless by nuclear contamination.

"I worry most about a nuclear IED," Colonel Stevenson says, using the Iraq war term for improvised explosive device. "The devastation that would cause, the contamination, the complexity of that catastrophic event." Preparing for the unthinkable is Colonel Stevenson's job as commander of the Maryland National Guard's 32nd Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support Team (CST).

The Pentagon certified the 32nd CST as ready for duty Sept. 20, bringing to 42 the number of certified CSTs (box, page 27) across the United States.

Eventually, at least 55 teams will cover each state, three U.S. territories and the District of Columbia. Congress has authorized that many thus far, with California the only state or territory with more than one.

(Florida and New York may soon join California with two teams, pushing the eventual total CSTs to 57. Lawmakers included funds in the fiscal 2007 defense appropriations act for a second team in Florida and New York. Their formal authorization is pending.)

The teams were designed to respond to attacks on the United States by chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, but their responsibilities continue to grow, evolve and sometimes are hard to pin down.

"One of the things that 9/11 taught us is nothing's beyond your imagination anymore," Colonel Stevenson says.

In 2001, for example, anthrax-laced letters mailed to Congress killed five postal workers and contaminated a postal sorting center in Brentwood, Md., just outside Washington, D.C.

And there's no shortage of other potential terrorist targets in Maryland, Colonel Stevenson says. There's Andrews Air Force Base on the edge of Washington, D.C., home to Air Force One and a hub for VIP travelers.

There are three massive professional sports stadiums. There's a nuclear power plant on Chesapeake Bay and an Army biological weapons lab at Fort Derrick, Md., north of Washington.

"Your imagination can run wild, there are so many scenarios," Colonel Stevenson says. "Maryland is sort of right in the middle of it," which puts the 32nd CST in the middle of it.

Across the country, a growing number of CSTs are in that position. Between 2001 and 2005, CSTs handled more than 400 incidents and assisted in more than 4,100.

They responded to the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and to hundreds of incidents as minor as examining suspicious packages.

But increasing use has sparked debate about whether CSTs are called too often and for the wrong reasons.

Some CST commanders and state officials declined to deploy their teams to help recover space shuttle wreckage, contending that picking up shuttle pieces scattered across five states was not an appropriate mission, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in their May report, "National Guard Bureau Needs to Clanfy Civil Support Teams' Mission and Address Management Challenges."

But other CSTs did participate. The debate flared again after Hurricane Katrina hit.

Since the hurricane did not involve weapons of mass destruction or terrorism, some Guard officials questioned whether it was an appropriate mission for CSTs.

At least one state refused to let its CST participate, the GAO reported. But 18 other CSTs sent personnel and equipment to the battered Gulf Coast.

At the National Guard Bureau, Maj. James McGuyer, acting chief of the Standardization and Evaluations Branch, contends that responding to Hurricane Katrina was the right thing to do. For one thing, it gave the CSTs their most realistic experience so far.

The devastation in Louisiana and Mississippi was "very similar to the effect you will see if we have a WMD attack," Major McGuyer says.

There was a mass evacuation, hundreds of casualties and a threat of biological and chemical contamination. "At one point, CSTs had identified hazards at over 15,000 different hazardous sites," he adds.

The CSTs' emergency communication abilities proved critical in the hurricane zone.

"We were able to link CSTs to individual parishes in Louisiana. The CST would work directly with the sheriff, the parish president or whoever was in charge," Major McGuyer adds. Often, local authorities learned from CST members what help was available from state and federal agencies.

The CSTs' Katrina performance so impressed the White House that a February 2006 White House report on hurricane lessons learned recommended possibly expanding CST roles to cover manmade and natural disasters as well as terrorist attacks.

Q A I read in your magazine about fit modeling. Becoming a fit model requires a lot of research and patience. Could you give me some guidance on how to pursue fit modeling in the Atlanta metro area? I was also looking for part-time work in mystery shopping. Could you provide additional information in this area?

--Anonymous

Via the Internet

Fit models collaborate with designers and their pattern makers to create garments sized for real people. What's more, the main industry requirement is that the model is a standard size 8. There are also plus-sized fit models with larger proportions. "A good fit model becomes technically skilled at helping the designer and pattern maker create the image of the garment," says fit model Shay Taylor (www.shaysworld.com).

To get started in the industry, contact several modeling agencies in Atlanta by logging on to www.joeedel man.com/agencies/agency_ga.php. Make sure these companies are reputable by asking for references and reviewing their work. Also read the Wilhelmina Guide to Modeling (Fireside; $16).To become a mystery shopper, try the National Association of Mystery Shoppers (www.nationalassocia tionofmysteryshoppers.org) and the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (www.mysteryshop.org) for leads on how to break into the industry. Make sure the company has a physical address, a contact person, and a good reputation, and don't send any money.