Accept no imitations

News director Martha Foley and Paul Smiths professor Dr. Curt Stager have been keeping our eye on the sparrow--and on the sparrowhawk--for over twenty years. Their conversations about the natural world, heard on Natural Selections and its predecessor Field Notes, have taken listeners into space and under the sea, into the invisible world of microbes, and into their own backyards--unscrewing the inscrutabilities of nature in an engaging and accessible manner. Having been carried by member stations around the country and by Armed Forces Radio, Natural Selections was our first offering when NPR launched its member-station podcast project earlier this year. Since then more than 10,000 listeners have downloaded programs to their iPods or other digital gear. Nearly 300 episodes can be heard on our Natural Selections page.

Here is a little poem inspired by today's episode of Natural Selections:

In Dispraise of Imitation

No matter how sincere you find the flattery,
the rat-tailed maggot is a loathsome thing.
Grown into a drone fly and decked just like a bee,
still it makes no honey, still it bears no sting.