Prophecy trawling

Again for the third and last time all the kingdoms of christianity and even those of the infidels will tremble for the space of 25 years and there will be more grievous wars and battles and there will be towns, cities, chateaux and all other buildings burnt, desolated and destroyed with a great effusion of virgin blood, the raping of married women and widows and suckling children dashed to peices against the walls of towns and so many other evils that will be committed under the aegis of Satan the infernal Prince that almost the entire world will be found undone and desolate. Before these events many rare birds will cry in the air "Now! Now!" and sometime later will vanish - Nostradamus 1503 - 1566.

Richard Kingsford recalls surveying Australia by air in the 1980s for waterbirds, flying over flocks of ducks, swans and pelicans so thick they were like clouds below the Cessna.

But nearly a quarter of a century since the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service embarked on its annual waterbird count, Dr Kingsford has discovered a terrible truth: the birds are disappearing.

Dr Kingsford, principal research scientist with the NSW Department of Environment and Conservation, said they had not gone elsewhere. They were dead - James Woodford 06/11/ 2004.

Uh-oh.