With this issue, Raymond Sokolov 



(page 76) retires as the writer of "A Matter 

 of Taste," having completed a stint of ex- 

 actly twenty years as an analyst of cultural 

 foodways in these pages. Sokolov's other 

 labors are not winding down, however. He 

 continues as editor of the Leisure and Arts 

 section for the Wall Street Journal, where 

 his responsibilities have recently been ex- 

 panded to include the creation of a culture 

 page for the European edition. Time-con- 

 suming travel to Europe (and occasionally 

 to Asia, where the Wall Street Journal has 

 another edition) is one of the reasons 

 Sokolov has decided to round off his Nat- 

 ural History career after meeting 229 

 deadlines. He is also finishing off a book 

 on grain and claims to be "incubating an- 

 other secret project." 



Because magpies are "common, extro- 

 verted, and conspicuous," writes Tim 

 Birkhead (page 54), he remembers being 

 aware of them even as a small child in 

 Yorkshire. Later, as a schoolboy birder, he 

 used to watch magpies and try to count 

 them as they flocked at their large winter 

 roosts. Birkhead went on to study zoology 

 at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne 

 and eventually discovered that next to 

 nothing was known about magpie breed- 



ing biology. Nonetheless, he didn't start 

 his formal research on the species until 

 after he earned his D. Phil, from Oxford's 

 Edward Grey Institute in 1976. Mean- 

 while, other birds have drawn Birkhead 

 far afield. He has studied marine species in 

 Arctic Canada, zebra finches in Australia, 

 buffalo weavers in Africa, and yellow- 

 billed magpies in California. Along the 

 way he earned a D.Sc. from Newcastle 

 and is now a professor of behavioral ecol- 



ogy at the University of Sheffield. Mar- 

 ried, with three children and two dogs, he 

 likes to paint, play the guitar, and write 

 about birds. His book The Magpies: The 

 Ecology and Behaviour of Black-billed 

 and Yellow-billed Magpies (London: T & 

 A. D. Poyser, 1991) is available in book- 

 shops, and he recommends going to the li- 

 brary to find the out-of-print Natural His- 

 tory of Magpies, by J. Linsdale (Berkeley: 

 Pacific Coast Avifauna 25, 1937). 



Robert Caputo (page 84), who pho- 

 tographed this month's "Natural Mo- 

 ment," is pictured here, showing his 



equipment to a group of Kenyans. After 

 graduating from college in 1976, he went 

 to Africa as a tourist. "I was so taken with 



what I saw that I wanted to show it to my 

 friends — and, of course, I wanted to con- 

 tinue seeing more of it myself. Photogra- 

 phy accomplished both." Caputo was sur- 

 prised to find that jobs were relatively easy 

 to find in Africa; he started his photogra- 

 phy career working for Jane Goodall, 

 shooting movies of the chimpanzees she 

 studied. Later, he became a Nairobi-based 

 stringer for Time, Life, and other maga- 

 zines. After his years in the bush, Caputo 

 attended New York University's film 

 school, where he earned his B.F.A. He is 

 now based in Washington, D.C., but fre- 

 quently travels back to Africa. He has 

 completed a number of wildlife books for 

 children and adults, all displaying his 

 work his work on that continent. Caputo 

 says he was surprised that the bird he pho- 

 tographed for this issue allowed him to get 

 so close, because "ostriches are shy and 

 usually run away before you can get 

 within about twenty yards of them." This 

 nest-sitting male stayed put as Caputo ap- 

 proached to within ten yards. The photo- 

 graph was taken with a Nikon F3 camera 

 and a Nikkor 300mm f 2.8 lens. 



Natural History 3/94 



