Tuesday, January 15, 2008
The Hoopoes Are Coming!
Predictably, the glad tidings that Britain will soon be home to hoopoeing Hoopoes, cooing Turtle Doves, all manner of fancy Bitterns, Bustards and Woodpeckers, a host of spectacular raptors, colourful Shrikes and frankly weird Wrynecks was presented as yet more bad news about global warming. It will, most likely, turn out to be complete tosh - but it would be good to drowse of a summer afternoon to the sound of turtle doves and hoopoes...
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
There was - was there not? - a collection of Updike poems called Hoping for a Hoopoe. He was always prescient.
ReplyDeleteThere was indeed. Oddly the American title was The Carpentered Hen - he must have sensed that we Brits would prefer a hoopoe (and don't care to practise our woodworking skills on farmyard fowl).
ReplyDeleteAn RSPB plot to get you to buy the new guide to British Birds (updated 2008 edition).
ReplyDeleteOur cardinal couple look particularly fine amid the bare ruined choirs of the backyard. Note to self: Refill the feeder.
ReplyDeleteI am sad to say that new neighbors down the street have put up bird feeders on little wrought iron curved poles a mere 3-feet high. The squirrels will get there easily, but more likely are the half-dozen cats who live on our block -- great hunters, all. I try to make it tough for our two old cats to catch the birds, but every now and then we find one on our doorstep. Plus mice and voles innumerable, and once even an enormous water rat: That was a Herculean feat on some feline's part, requiring a journey to the nearby creek to find it.
I have remembered for many years seeing in Liddell & Scott that Aristophanes somewhere uses "popopoi" for the cry of the hoopoe.
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