Last night my husband and I were walking when we saw a man bent over on the ground, crushing (碾碎) something with a rock. He was so focused on his _________ that he didn’t look up at anyone passing by. We kept noticing him and _________ what he could be doing. I thought he was crushing stones to make sand, but why would he do that?

_________, we decided to go up and ask him. He was crushing pieces of left-over bread that he had _________ to prepare food for the birds that come there early morning. The large pieces of bread would be _________ for the birds to eat so he crushed them into powder. Every _________, after coming home from his job as a tailor, he goes around the villa (乡间别墅), collecting left-over bread from all his housemates. He then eats a quick meal and comes here, and spends the next 1 — 2 hours _________ crushing each piece and makes a neat pile for the birds. He has been doing this for the last 3 — 4 years. What _________ us more was that he was _________ that we were even taking an interest in this, since for him it wasn’t a big __________.

One morning in early fall, I spotted a pair of wild geese on our pond. The beautiful sight caught me by _______, because we’d never seen geese there before. I wondered where they came from and why they’d _______ our pond.

“As the days passed, I couldn’t _______ getting a closer look and started talking to the geese. They craned their necks and raised their heads _______ but seemed to realize I was a _______ and not an enemy. I felt _______ we were bonding.

One day as they were _______ in the grass near the driveway, I discovered the reason for their _______ —the male had a broken left wing. He was _______ to fly, and his lifelong mate would not leave him ________. I marveled (惊叹) at the ________ between them.

I asked a wildlife biologist friend what I should ________. He explained that sometime a broken wing will heal by itself and suggested letting ________ take its course.

On the first day of November, I was ________ in the vicinity (邻近) of the geese with my tractor. I caught some ________ from the comer of my eye.

Both geese were running toward the pond, wings beating ________. The geese gained enough altitude to clear a neighbor’s house, then ________ back toward me, flying no more than 50 feet over my head as if to say goodbye. Then they were out of ________.

I grew ________ them during their stay at our pond, and I miss them. I’ll never forget their ________ to each other. We could all learn a lesson or two from this pair.

My PhD project is to protect a tiny species of fish, whose color is greenish. To ______eggs, Clanwilliam sandfish (沙鱼) swim to ______tributaries (支流) of the Doring river system in South Africa. Local people say it was once a ______event: The water seemed to change ______ as thousands of sandfish migrated to the shallower tributaries. Now, ______those numbers have reduced to dangerous levels.

My PhD project at South Africa’s University of Cape Town is in ______with a nongovernmental organization in saving sandfish. Human activity, climate change, etc, are drying up the rivers. As newly young sandfish try to ______to the upstream (上游), they now get ______in shallow tributaries. The sandfish population has decreased by more than 90% since we began keeping count. They’re now regarded as ______species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.When the river starts to dry up, we ______young sandfish and put them into buckets of water, then move them by truck to prepared fish nurseries (鱼种场) ______ by local people. The support from local people is amazing. Once the sandfish are large enough to be less threatened, we will ______them to the natural ecosystem.

The data so far show the project has been ______. We’ve ______ about 36,000 young sandfish over the past three years. I’m looking forward to ______those numbers next year.