Two visitors--whose names I failed to get--reported the first Golden-cheeked Warbler of the season on the Refuge on Monday morning, March 15. They saw a male warbler near trail marker 4 on the Cactus Rocks Trail at Warbler Vista. Later in the afternoon, Elizabeth Lesley and I hiked into our Rodgers Prime Warbler Study Site and found two male warblers. Whew! Spring is officially here.
* * * * *
Below The Line:
I tend to visualize just one thing when I use the abbreviation "GCWA". However, away from the juniper-oak woodlands of the Texas Hill Country, the world is not so constrained. Some time ago, I was doing a search for articles on the Golden-cheeked Warbler and happened to type this standard four-letter abbreviation into a search engine. That led me on an interesting diversion. Between Google, Yahoo!, and acronymfinder.com, I learned of the existence of many concepts and organizations I never would have dreamed of. Not surprisingly, a great many are on the Gulf Coast; among these are:
Gulf Coast Wakeboard Association [Which owns the domain name "gcwa.com".]
Gulf Coast Water Authority
Gulf Coast Woodturner's Association
Gulf Coast Writers Association
Gulf Coast Wrestling Alliance
But the collection of associations was farther flung than just those. Witness:
Gastonia Community Watch Association [Gaston Co., NC]
George's Creek Watershed Association [Allegany Co., MD]
Georgia Cattlewomen's Association
Georgia County Welfare Association [Covington, GA; owns the domain "www.gcwa.us"]
Gills Creek Watershed Association [Columbia, SC]
Greater Charlotte Workroom Association [Charlotte, NC]
Grey County Woodlot Association [somewhere in Canada]
Even farther afield, I found:
Gliding Club of Western Australia
and,
Global Championship Wrestling Alliance
In the realm of science, I found:
Gilford fine sandy loam, 0 to 1 percent slope [Pulaski Co., IN]
and I have no idea where they came up with "GCWa" for that. However, my all-time favorite has to be:
Generalized Closed World Assumption
This has something to do with "Disjunctive Logic Programs and Deductive Databases", to wit:
"The closed world semantics defined above is the "strongest" negation semantics possible for disjunctive logic programs based on minimal Herbrand models and is known as the generalized closed world assumption (GCWA)."
I'm glad I could clarify that for you.
