From JAMES BELLCHAMBERS
Your article on the space shuttle’s sonic booms (Science, 14 April)
may provide an explanation for a phenomenon which I observed while living
in Sussex in 1980.
The sonic boom of Concorde was regularly heard on its return flight
from America. A very short time in advance of the boom a pheasant would
give its alarm call. Did this pheasant know something the scientists of
Caltech did not and are other animals, perhaps even man, similarly able
to sense such low-level ground pressure waves?
James Bellchambers Totnes, Devon
