Saturday, January 9, 2016

Winter fauna

Do 'fauna' include birds?  I suppose they must.  In any event there was a fine vocal magpie in the backyard grove this morning declaiming in Anglo-Saxon: "Hwaet!  Hwaet!  Hwaet!"  I didn't have time to stop and explain "Hwaet" was going on, unfortunately.

We have had pictures and reports of a number of unusual birds in the area this winter -- a yellow-shafted flicker, and more spectacularly, a gyrfalcon... There is a Christmastide bird-census, but I've never yet taken part.  (They don't use the long form, I understand.)

Guest once more of the blessed library...and grateful for it.  Time to fly away and free up this terminal for some other happy soul.

Happy "Baptism of the Lord," tomorrow, everybody.  Remember, your cue is, "Jesus stands in line."  All else follows from that.  You have been told.

2 comments:

Eclecticity said...

Magpies are apparently quite intelligent birds. A while back a heard a portion of a radio interview of someone who had a pet magpie, and claimed that it could actually talk like a parrot.

Crimson Rambler said...

Well, it's a corvid, all right, and they're pretty intelligent; I suppose if the raven could say, "Nevermore!" a magpie might learn to say SOMETHING? (trying not to be distracted by the starling who should say "nothing but 'Mortimer'" -- that's a different problem).