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J.S. Bach composed his St. Matthew Passion in 1727. But for the better part of a century after that, the piece essentially disappeared, unknown to all but a few specialists.

Annual sunflowers, important in the cut flower industry, are grown commercially for seeds eaten by humans and birds, and for cooking oil. Sunflowers are one of the few important food crops that originated in north America.

The list of other birds that relish these seeds is lengthy, a short list includes ring-necked pheasants, quail bobolinks, goldfinches, meadowlarks, nuthatches and tufted titmice.

“C” is for Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge. Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1932 as a wintering ground for migrating waterfowl.

The chimney swift (Chaetura pelagica) is a bird belonging to the swift family Apodidae. A member of the genus Chaetura, it is closely related to both the Vaux's swift and the Chapman's swift; in the past, the three were sometimes considered to be conspecific. It has no subspecies. The chimney swift is a medium-sized, sooty gray bird with very long, slender wings and very short legs. Like all swifts, it is incapable of perching, and can only cling vertically to surfaces. The chimney swift feeds primarily on flying insects, but also on airborne spiders. It generally mates for life. It builds a bracket nest of twigs and saliva stuck to a vertical surface, which is almost always a human-built structure, typically a chimney.

The red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus) is a medium-sized hawk. Its breeding range spans eastern North America and along the coast of California and northern to northeastern-central Mexico. It is a permanent resident throughout most of its range, though northern birds do migrate, mostly to central Mexico. The main conservation threat to the widespread species is deforestation.

The red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) is a passerine bird of the family Icteridae found in most of North America and much of Central America. It breeds from Alaska and Newfoundland south to Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, Mexico, and Guatemala, with isolated populations in western El Salvador, northwestern Honduras, and northwestern Costa Rica. It may winter as far north as Pennsylvania and British Columbia, but northern populations are generally migratory, moving south to Mexico and the southern United States. Claims have been made that it is the most abundant living land bird in North America, as bird-counting censuses of wintering red-winged blackbirds sometimes show that loose flocks can number in excess of a million birds per flock and the full number of breeding pairs across North and Central America may exceed 250 million in peak years.

“W” is for Wayne, Arthur Trezevant (1863-1930). Ornithologist.

The corn snake (Pantherophis guttatus) is a North American species of rat snake that subdues its small prey by constriction. It is found throughout the southeastern and central United States. Though superficially resembling the venomous copperhead and often killed as a result of this mistaken identity, corn snakes lack functional venom and are harmless. Corn snakes are beneficial to humans by helping to control populations of wild rodent pests that damage crops and spread disease.

Guineafowl (/ˈɡɪnifaʊl/; sometimes called "pet speckled hens, "original fow,l or "guinea hens") are birds of the family Numididae in the order Galliformes. They are endemic to Africa and rank among the oldest of the gallinaceous birds. Phylogenetically, they branched off from the core Galliformes after the Cracidae (chachalacas, guans, and curassows) and before the Odontophoridae (New World quail).