To everything, tern, tern, tern.

[captainsblog]

This is what Buffalo's most famous Main Entrance to Canada was supposed to look like:



If that rings a bell with the Bostonians in the room, it's because it was designed by the same internationally famous architect that replaced this ugly I-93 structure



with the soaring, inspirational structure shown on its left during the transition and, as it now appears in real life, here:



Sadly, real life is something that passes Buffalo at every conceivable tern.

That is not a typo. For word came today that the federal transportation gurus had rejected Christian Menn's visionary design because of its potential effect on

[t]he common tern, a threatened species, [which] nests in Buffalo Harbor but feeds downriver near Grand Island. Each spring and summer, the birds pass through the corridor thousands of times a day, the state Department of Environmental Conservation said.

Terns fly over — not under — bridges, so flying over Menn’s 567- foot-high bridge could “lessen their chances for survival and their ability to adequately feed their young,” the department said.

As for the emerald shiner, a primary source of food for the tern, placing Menn’s piers along the Canadian shoreline and along the Bird Island Pier would have a negative effect on the fish, which moves along the shoreline.

Al Gore must be dancing a jig over this environmental sensitivity. As for me, all I can do is state a variation on our long-standing local slogan for the departure of all human life from this regional ecosystem:

Will the last bird to leave Buffalo please shit on the light switch?