Songbirds appear in The New York Times

From Sunday's edition, an opinion piece by Bridget Stutchbury titled "Did Your Shopping List Kill a Songbird?":

Migratory birds, modern-day canaries in the coal mine, reveal an environmental problem hidden to consumers. Testing by the United States Food and Drug Administration shows that fruits and vegetables imported from Latin America are three times as likely to violate Environmental Protection Agency standards for pesticide residues as the same foods grown in the United States. Some but not all pesticide residues can be removed by washing or peeling produce, but tests by the Centers for Disease Control show that most Americans carry traces of pesticides in their blood. American consumers can discourage this poisoning by avoiding foods that are bad for the environment, bad for farmers in Latin America and, in the worst cases, bad for their own families.

Stutchbury, who teaches biology at Toronto's York University, wrote "Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World's Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them" (2007).