新托福听写训练 第3期

You know, it's kind of fashionable among students of birds to study well and exhausted¹ species, especially in danger ones like golden eagles or spotted² owls³. But I often think that everyday-birds, birds that really are part of our lives are simply overlooked, so I'd like to spend some time talking about a very common bird “black crows.” It might surprise you to know that crows are among the most challenging birds to observe and study. First of all, they look alike. Picking out one or several individual crows in a flock in finding them again later is almost impossible, people study in larger animals can put some kind of mark on them, so they can tell them apart, well, you can trap large animal like a bear in a mobilized or a tranquilized gun, then it is easy to put a tag on it. But try doing that to a crow you probably kill it. Secondly⁴, crows are highly intelligent survivors⁵, they adapt easily to wildly varying situations. This adds to the difficulty of studying in them, because they pick up so many individual allies habits, so you can never be sure about any conclusion you reach about crows from observing them applies to the whole species or just those particular crows you being watching. One general observation about crows that can't be made the reasonable degree of certainty is that in the last forty years, more and more crows have been found living in large cities. They are attracted by people who produce a normal surmount⁶ of garbage and leave them places that crows can easily get to, it make for distances they must travel to hunt a lot shorter.

1 exhausted   

adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的

参考例句：

• It was a long haul home and we arrived exhausted.搬运回家的这段路程特别长，到家时我们已筋疲力尽。
• Jenny was exhausted by the hustle of city life.珍妮被城市生活的忙乱弄得筋疲力尽。

2 spotted   

adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的

参考例句：

• The milkman selected the spotted cows,from among a herd of two hundred.牛奶商从一群200头牛中选出有斑点的牛。
• Sam's shop stocks short spotted socks.山姆的商店屯积了有斑点的短袜。

3 owls   

n.猫头鹰( owl的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• 'Clumsy fellows,'said I; 'they must still be drunk as owls.' “这些笨蛋，”我说，“他们大概还醉得像死猪一样。” 来自英汉文学 - 金银岛
• The great majority of barn owls are reared in captivity. 大多数仓鸮都是笼养的。 来自辞典例句

4 secondly   

adv.第二，其次

参考例句：

• Secondly,use your own head and present your point of view.第二，动脑筋提出自己的见解。
• Secondly it is necessary to define the applied load.其次，需要确定所作用的载荷。

5 survivors   

幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The survivors were adrift in a lifeboat for six days. 幸存者在救生艇上漂流了六天。
• survivors clinging to a raft 紧紧抓住救生筏的幸存者

6 surmount   

vt.克服；置于…顶上

参考例句：

• We have many problems to surmount before we can start the project.我们得克服许多困难才能著手做这项工作。
• We are fully confident that we can surmount these difficulties.我们完全相信我们能够克服这些困难。