Saturday, March 29, 2008
Giant Bird News
While Bryan recovers his right mind, I must return to one of the long-running themes of this blog - the invasion of our fair land by Giant Birds. My latest posting told of an incongruous sighting of an Egret (giving rise to a flurry of sparkling wordplay). Since then, things have been a little quieter - but, to coin a phrase, They haven't gone away, you know. This morning, walking down my Surrey suburban high street, scanning the skies as usual (all part of the service), I saw an impressively large Cormorant, flying due south in a very determined manner. A long way from the Thames, a much longer way from the coast - what was it doing? We can only speculate, but it is surely a sign of Things to Come... Ugly bastards, cormorants.
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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.
Nige,
ReplyDeleteyou seem to be on your own at the moment (you and the odd tweety pie) so I will join you in a discussion about our feathered friends.
We live off the beaten track a bit so do get the occasional visitor.
At the moment its that smelly noisey swine of a heron, munching on the newly laid frogspawn in our pond. To enjoy his meal he first scattered the male ducks who use our pond as a bachelors club while the females do domestic things on the curling pond next door.
The bad guys (crows) are busy nicking the food put out for the proletariat (various small, fluffy, cuddly things)
That devious little git of a stoat (looks like Milly Band) is doing a recce of the nests in the wisteria and ivy, lining up the next few weeks sandwitches.
The shifty old sod of a barn owl was screeching all night again and crapped all over my granddaughters swing.
The large mob of woodpidgeons who scrounge off us are all shagging like crazy, its that time of year again.
A pair of buzzards who have been peeping away above us all day have finally been driven off by the heavy mob (crows again.)
The robins been following me around again, gives me the creeps, he does.
It`s chucking it down now and is about 5 degrees, i`m bored, hence ramble, never make another Wordsworth, I dont suppose.
Never mind, cuckoo and pterodactyl due shortly.
my country uncle used to tell us, if you see a bunch of crows they're probably rooks and if you see a lone rook it's probably a crow. but he also used to tell us how to spot weasels and stoats - apparently, a weasel is weasily indentified whereas a stoat is stoatally different.
ReplyDeleteThanks Malty, pretty much with you on all that, apart from the Barn Owl - that's a bird I miss, we haven't had them round here in years.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in Paris last week, two very noisy crows ("corneille," my French friends assured me -- but, damn, they were bigger than any crow we get hereabouts) were roosting in the tree just outside the hotel window. Loud, screechy pair, not averse to chasing the the sparrows around.
ReplyDeleteThey seemed like some kind of portent to me, like the rooks in Tolkien, but Sophie and Francois laughed when I said so. It was only the gardens of Les Halles that drew them there, they assured me.
Prediction: when all of humanity is gone, the birds who will take over, just like these twa corbies.
Trust the French to name their crows after their leading dramatists...
ReplyDeleteSusan,my last face to face with a French bird was at a Pissaro exhibition at the d`Orsay.
ReplyDeleteWe had been around the exhibition, I came out of and then went back in through the exit. This must have been a cardinal sin.
This old French bat accosted me and was giving me a dressing down. I should point out at this juncture that whilst in France I refuse to admit that I speak the language, this is in retaliation for de Gaulles "NON". I have stuck to this principle for years.
I tried to explain to said avian that my reason for entering the exhibition again was to find madame Malty, who was as usual taking her time viewing.
To no avail, the discussion became somewhat overheated, I was about to adopt the Geordie school of diplomacy (withering personal insult followed by a stream of expletives) when madame Malty appeared and gave one of her famous appraisal`s of certain French impressionists, (if you think they are scathing you should hear her views on Gilbert and George)
"The myopic old fart should have been a wallpaper designer" were, I believe, her words.
At this juncture the bat ushered us out of the museum.
French birds? stuff them down the catacom`s I say.
Incidentally madame Malty`s first G&Gs review...
"They use shit ? they are shit"