The Friday Fillip
Spring is… well, springing, and so this Friday I point you to a site about those warbling harbingers that have taken to harbingeing a trifle to loudly outside my window at shortly before 6 a.m. and would they please knock it off until at least 7.
The United States Geological Survey Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter presents “photographs, songs, videos, identification tips, maps, and life history information for North American birds.” Now you, too, can identify the culprits that distract you from abstract thought and juristic ratiocination with their pert plumage and soprano syrinxes.
Take the common loon… not, alas, outside my window… a very Canadian gaviiforme: 75 to 80 days to fledge… found in every province but one… upper wings wholly dark in flight… and not to be confused with Clark’s Grebes, which have “thinner bills marked with yellow and show white wings in flight”… and sounding like this.
Checking on the cardinal who thinks he owns the trees in my back garden, I discover that he, like many birds, has both a song and a call. No end of things to learn. So lift your sights this weekend: from the black-chinned sparrow to the greater prairie-chicken, it’s all up in the air here.
Well there are birds and birds, and our village is 3 miles up the coastal walk from Cellardyke. Where the swan was found on Wednesday. http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=527702006
http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2006/04/06/PH2006040600697.jpg
But lest you think I’m scaremongering, let me quote Professor Colin Blakemore on Radio Four’s Today programme yesterday morning, John Humphries “the way that a human could catch bird flu would be to cuddle an infected chicken, or drink swan’s blood”.
For some, having to desist such practices because of concerns over avian flu could cause life to lose all meaning.