In our daily paper a few mornings ago there was a pullout page of "Common Garden Birds". As opposed to "Common or Garden Birds. That was all very nice .... the only odd thing was, the very first thing they felt the need to tell us about each bird was some cranky old " local" name for it. Not anything useful like the size, or the sounds it produces. No. But they DO tell us how many of them there are in Britain. That's going to help your average garden bird-lover a lot. SO .... here's something to take your mind off the current heatwave ..... Here's a selection of those " names loik what they country folks do use" .... Except, of course, I've jmubeld them all up .... ..and your mission is to try to work out which goes with which. Great Tit Stare Blackbird Scrubber Starling Pickcheese Blue Tit Pridden Prai Chaffinch Pianet Dunnock Flackie Gt. Spot Comet Magpie Woofell Goldcrest Woodcock Pilot Pheasant Witwall I've done a bit of "research" about those names. I started by seeing if they were in my world-famous copy of Chambers 20th Century Dictionary , which I won by being a brilliant bird-identifier many years ago .... not that I'm showing off or owt. Anyway ... only three (3) of those nicknames were in it. Huh ! Feeble or what ? Next, I googled them .... Asking ... "What sort of bird is a ********* ? but I only found 2 of them that way . So ... can you do better than My Great Big Dictionary or Google ? Even more importantly, what's the music going to be ? Well, here's a lovely thing ... Wondering aloud
How we feel today Last night sipped the sunset My hand in her hair We are our own saviours As we start both our hearts beating life Into each other Wondering aloud Will the years treat us well As she floats in the kitchen, I'm tasting the smell Of toast as the butter runs Then she comes, spilling crumbs on the bed And I shake my head And it's only the giving That makes you what you are
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What a shambles all this " exam grades re-adjustment" is turning out to be. What a surprise ! The rot set in when "they" announced that ... ... they would all get "The Grades That They Need" ( !!!) .. now there's a thing. ... could it possibly have anything to do with ... ... the desperate need that Universities have for MON€Y. ? I'll leave that for you to consider. But what I say is .... why can't I claim " The List That I Need." (??) After all, my " almost 400" list is only (slightly) deficient because ... ... things haven't always worked out the way they should have. ... which wasn't my fault. .... that " Not going to tick Lesser Grey Shrike" episode was a striking example of "offspring-twitch-blocking" ..as was the " Capercaillie Dip" due to Lack of Time ... ... and the " No time to stop at the Definite Ptarmigan Viewing Spot" ... just a few of the "Offspring Effect Disasters" that I have had. It's not my fault that "we" had twins ..... I can assure you that twins are about 237x as much troubles as just the one. Maybe 250 x. My plan was, with the one child we were assured we were going to have, I could still do a lot of birding while The Significant Otter looked after the 1 (one) child. So, to suddenly discover, on "delivery day" , that we had in fact got two came as an avalanche of tectonic proportions.... I staggered back to my place of work like a person who has just spend an hour or two riding a Big Dipper ... a rather appropriate entertainment. From that moment on, my "Tick Trajectory" took a nose-dive into the abyss. "Flatlining" is , I think, the technical term. The King of Bryher, for example, isn't married. That just goes to show, does it not. And neither is The Flat Controller. [He never has thanked me, by the way, for that "weighing chart" I devised for him.] So what I'm proposing, in my current "delapidated, old-and-knackered" state, is that twin-owners should get a special subsidy from the gubblymint a bit like that " two-for-the-price-of-one" eating-out thingy. Fair Do's ! Here's a few links to "fill you in" on some of all that stuff ... -ode-on-not-ticking-the-capercaillie.html 694-the-ups-and-downs-of-birding.html 771-in-which-i-do-a-bit-of-upjustment.html 775-those-extra-32-ticks.html "Swan" was a recent, if rather vague, "Tweet of the Day" That was a trifle vague, I thought. Swan, he said .... but,hey? what sort ? There's Black, and Mute and also Whooper Any of which would be super-dooper. [Bewick's is another But I'll go no futher.] His main theme was some verse so I quickly wrote this drivel : at least, I've made it terse not just a load of scribble.... As for poems, well, I found some ... and chose this remarkable one it's a bit full-on it's by Andre Breton (his portrait of his wife is quite fun !). It wanders about like a dr ke u n lo un t in the heat of the midday sun. But you'll have to wait for the swan it's quite a long way on its back is all it mentions (detail, it seems, he shuns). After all that nonsense, here's the actual poem .... you might care to tot up all the various mammals, birds, substances and body parts in it. Written by Andre Breton Freedom of Love (Translated from the French by Edouard Rodti) My wife with the hair of a wood fire With the thoughts of heat lightning With the waist of an hourglass With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger My wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitude With the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earth With the tongue of rubbed amber and glass My wife with the tongue of a stabbed host With the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyes With the tongue of an unbelievable stone My wife with the eyelashes of strokes of a child's writing With brows of the edge of a swallow's nest My wife with the brow of slates of a hothouse roof And of steam on the panes My wife with shoulders of champagne And of a fountain with dolphin-heads beneath the ice My wife with wrists of matches My wife with fingers of luck and ace of hearts With fingers of mown hay My wife with armpits of marten and of beechnut And of Midsummer Night Of privet and of an angelfish nest With arms of seafoam and of riverlocks And of a mingling of the wheat and the mill My wife with legs of flares With the movements of clockwork and despair My wife with calves of eldertree pith My wife with feet of initials With feet of rings of keys and Java sparrows drinking My wife with a neck of unpearled barley My wife with a throat of the valley of gold Of a tryst in the very bed of the torrent With breasts of night My wife with breasts of a marine molehill My wife with breasts of the ruby's crucible With breasts of the rose's spectre beneath the dew My wife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of days With the belly of a gigantic claw My wife with the back of a bird fleeing vertically With a back of quicksilver With a back of light With a nape of rolled stone and wet chalk And of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinking My wife with hips of a skiff With hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathers And of shafts of white peacock plumes Of an insensible pendulum My wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestos My wife with buttocks of swans' backs My wife with buttocks of spring With the sex of an iris My wife with the sex of a mining-placer and of a platypus My wife with a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeat My wife with a sex of mirror My wife with eyes full of tears With eyes of purple panoply and of a magnetic needle My wife with savanna eyes My wife with eyes of water to he drunk in prison My wife with eyes of wood always under the axe My wife with eyes of water-level of level of air earth and fire. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well ! That was, er, a bit odd. It isn't very flattering for Ms. Breton. But now .... the all-important Music Spot ... Swans are big ...so I chose this ........ In the previous post I wrote about Ravens rolling, and speculated about the reasons for it. After a lot of scrabbling about in my "office" I managed to find my copy of "Ravens in Winter" by the excellent Bernd Heinrich ..... another one for the World-Famous Long-Awaited Pyramid of Bird Books ... Well readers, I hope that has illuminated the topic somewhat. (?) As will this ... the excellent and highly relevant "A l'ènvers, à l'endroit " .... On n'est pas encore revenu du pays des mystères/ Il y a qu'on est entré là sans avoir vu de la lumière/ Il y a l'eau, le feu, le computer, Vivendi et la terre/ On doit pouvoir s'épanouir à tout envoyer enfin en l'air/ On peut toujours saluer les petits rois de pacotille/ On peut toujours espérer entrer un jour dans la famille/ Sûr que tu pourras devenir un crack boursier a toi tout seul/ On pourrait même envisager que tout nous explose à la gueule/ Autour des oliviers palpitent les origines/ Infiniment se voir roulé dans la farine/ A l'envers, à l'endroit, à l'envers, à l'endroit/ Y'a t'il un incendie prévu ce soir dans l'hémicycle/ On dirait qu'il est temps pour nous d'envisager un autre cycle/ On peut caresser des idéaux sans s'éloigner d'en bas/ On peut toujours rêver de s'en aller mais sans bouger de là/ Il paraît que la blanche colombe a trois cents tonnes de plombs dans l'aile/ Il paraît qu'il faut s'habituer à des printemps sans hirondelles/ La belle au bois dormant a rompu les négociations /Unilatéralement le prince entame des protestations/ Doit-on se courber encore et toujours pour un ligne droite ?/ Prière pour trouver les grands espaces entre les parois d'une boîte/ Serait-ce un estuaire ou le bout du chemin au loin qu'on entrevoit/ Spéciale dédicace à la flaque où on nage, où on se noie/ Autour des amandiers fleurissent les mondes en sourdine/ No pasaran sous les fourches caudines/ A l'envers, à l'endroit, à l'envers, à l'endroit...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Two days ago The Significant Otter and me went to Scotland. Amazingly, the weather was OK. Even, astoundingly, very good. Birds, however, were thin on the ground. Slightly less thin in the air. [ And over the whole day, at home, on the way to Scotland, walking around a bit of Scotland, coming back from Scotland, and then being at home again, I only saw 1 (one) Swift. [ Compared to a massive 4 the day before. But I digress]. While we sat on a bit of Scotland, a Raven flew over us, and carried on into the distance. As it got smaller and smaller, it did a roll. Just the one. It's always a fine thing to see. BUT ... why? Why did it do a roll at that moment? And not 17 seconds before ? Or 17 seconds later ? Why did it only do one of them ? The usual theory about " that sort of thing" is the "showing their thermometers" scenario. Showing their fitness and strength and skill. Demonstrating their daringness/bravado ? Look, I can roll over, I can swoop, I can dive into a lake from 200' up, I can catch and kill a rat, I can drill holes in trees to dig out grubs .... I'm strong and tough. But this Raven had no other Ravens to show off that roll to. Whatever it was "for", it was wasted because it was unseen by the presumed target ... another Raven. So maybe it did it just "because it could." Like those gormless teenagers who whizz along the pavement on their £400 bikes with their smartphone in one hand and the other hand in their pocket. And as for that lone Raven in a hostile world... maybe it was thrilling and exciting.... fun, I suspect, was out of the question. This is the nearest relevant thing I could find .... and now, as usual ,a spot of relevant music ... Afterthoughts ......
[a] Is it only the male that rolls ? [b] Is it only "big" birds that roll? I've never seen small birds do it .. or even medium-sized ones. [c] But why not ? [d] Do they always "do" it the same way .... clockwise or anticlockwise ? [e] That one did it clockwise viewed from the back. [f] Do they do it so they can check that there's no predators above them ? [g] Are there any research papers about this phenomenon ? [h] Is this paragraph below the only thing I could find ? [i] Yes. Flight Because ravens consume a lot more carrion, which is unpredictable in its availability and location, they spend a great deal more soaring than crows do. So if you see a black bird cruising the sky for more than a few seconds, it’s most likely a raven. Ravens are also unique from crows in that they barrel roll to advertise their territory. So if you see a barrel rolling bird, there’s a better chance it’s a raven. So there we are ..... we've hit the buffers on that topic. This is a bit of the Sunday page of this week's Radio Times ..... but there's something's wrong somewhere ... and there's also ,for some reason or other, an extended version a bit later on. And even later on there's ANOTHER thing , this time about Alien Birds in our lovely, untarnished UK. Avian Avalanche, that's what it is.... read on ... and on.... And as for the music, Kate Rusby was on't radio yesterday singing a Cure song, and a Bangles song .... both beautifully done ... here's Manic Monday..... If you haven't found out what was "wrong" with that Tweet of the Day, I'll show you a bit further d
o w n d e e p d o w n .... Well, it says " Greek Warbler" ... so my first thought was, it's a misprint for Green Warbler ...... but when I actually listened to it, it turns out to be neither. It was an Orphean Warbler. Bah ! Can these nincompoops not get anything right ? I found this tucked inside a dusty old book I hadn't looked at for ages .... it wasn't even a bird book.... it was a book of strange chess problems. But ... suppose that was found in the jacket pocket of a murder victim ! And there was nothing else ... no name or address to be found. Could he be tracked down ? It might even be a she. They'd have to find out when that collection of birds occurred. And then try to find out who had been there to see them. And they could patch together a list of as many of the visitors as they could. All very Sherlock Holmes. But ... some of you avid twitchers out there ... you might know when that was. [ Ey-up ! An oik has just flown over the "office."] So ... we know that note was written on a Sunday evening. But which one ? We need an answer ! I bet The King of Bryher knows ... but meanwhile ... a song and while we're at it, here's something that needs some sort of answer/explanation as well ... |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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