View allAll Photos Tagged Behaviour
AK 2017: Katmai N.P. and Preserve. We flew to Mirror Lake from Lake Clark then trekked along Funnel Creek where we spent the day watching and photographing the brown bears. This confrontation was interesting (it happened twice while we were there). The light colored bear caught the sockeye salmon. The more aggressive darker bear came over to check it out and managed to steal it away after a scrimmage. The lighter colored bear looked like s/he was well fed, so this behaviour probably didn't happen too often. (Tight crop)
Flickr Explore 8/13/17 - Thank You!
The “rushing display” of Western Grebe is exciting, and in this case some other birds seem to be inspired to try it out… The ‘copycat artists’ were apparently individuals not yet of breeding age; some of these younger birds were also hanging around active nests as if to get some lessons. I observed these intriguing behaviours at a site in southern Alberta, a province of Canada in western North America.
Macro Monday: #Wheel(s)
Size of the frame: 5 cm / 1,96 inches
Please press "Z".
Flickr wheels? Possible :-) Last minute idea yesterday evening. Actually I had a "Wheelscape" in mind, a close-up of a real wheel or tire with interesting patterns and rubber texture. But since I don't have a car or bike, that would have meant to take the camera (and tripod!), go out, and shoot a random car or bicycle wheel/tire in the street at a low angle. Really? And risk being reported to the police because of suspicious behaviour or a possible manipulation of a car, or as a possible bicycle thief? No. Definitely no ;-) Apart from the fact that I would have felt incredibly stupid squatting in front of a car tire with my camera. Understandable, right? As an extra excuse: it was waaayyy too hot to go out yesterday, cosy 38 °C / 100,4 °F.
So I stayed at home, and had to find something else to capture. I didn't want to capture the toy car wheel, so went on an expedition around the apartment to find some other wheel. I took a few shots of a rotary cutter, with a sewing pattern as background, but it looked boring. But at least that gave me the idea to try and capture my sewing machine's yarn bobbin(s) :-) They are round, they have a hole in the middle, they run on an axis (sort of) = Wheel(s).
Since the curtains were drawn to keep the sunshine and heat out, I used an LED lamp for some extra light, and that cast an interesting looking light reflection / shadow (something I have experimented with before) on the white semi-glossy tile I used as background. An interesting thing I had never noticed before is that the yarn isn't just made of threads of one colour, but both the red and blue yarn are made of coloured and white threads; I suppose the white is some synthetic fibre to increase the tear strength of the yarn.
Captured with the camera mounted "lens first" / upside down (my new macro tripod has already payed off in terms of safety and saving nerves!), and processed, as usual, in Luminar 3: Accent-AI filter at 30, small and medium details at 100 (yarn bobbins and threads only), removed colour cast, method 2 at 20; and in ON1 Photo RAW, where I purified the highlights.
A Happy Macro Monday, Everyone!
Am Rad drehen
Bzw. an der Garnspule. In Flickr-Farben? Warum nicht, war ja verrückt genug hier in letzter Zeit :-) Pink, Blau und Gelb waren auch die einzigen Farben, die ich auf den Auswechselspulen schon drauf hatte, und da Gelb nicht so toll aussah, habe ich mich an Pink und Blau gehalten.
Das war aber gar nicht meine ursprüngliche Idee. Eigentlich wollte ich eine Art "Reifenlandschaft" fotografieren, also ganz nah ran an einen Auto- oder Fahrradreifen, für ein evtl. interessantes Muster. Dumm nur, dass ich weder Auto noch Rad fahre. Das hätte also bedeutet, sich das Stativ zu schnappen, rauszugehen und einen beliebigen Reifen an einem auf der Straße geparkten Gefährt zu fotografieren. Und dabei zu riskieren, als vermeintliche Fahrraddiebin oder Reifen-Manipulatorin Ärger zu bekommen. Und darauf hatte ich keine Lust. Mal davon abgesehen, dass ich mir unendlich blöd dabei vorgekommen wäre, mich mit der Kamera vor einen Autoreifen zu hocken. Nachvollziehbar, oder? Und zu heiß (38 °C in Berlin) war es gestern sowieso.
Es musste also ein "inhäusiger" Reifen her. Das Spielzeugauto wollte ich nicht nehmen, also war eine kleine Erkundungstour durch die Wohnung angezeigt. Bei der ich irgendwann den Rollschneider entdeckte (den ich noch nie verwendet habe, um Stoff zuzuschneiden). Ich habe es mit einem Schnittmuster als Hintergrund versucht, fand die Bilder aber eher uninteressant. Immerhin war ich aber nun schon mal in der richtigen, nämlich der Nähecke gelandet. Und da fielen mir die Ersatz-Garnspulen ein, die der MM-Definition von "Wheel(s)" ziemlich genau entsprechen. Der wegen der zugezogenen Vorhänge und des schwindenden Tageslichts benötigte LED-Strahler brachte mich dann zusätzlich auf die Idee, mit den Lichtspiegelungen und dem Schattenwurf, den er auf der matt-glänzenden Kachel (als Untergrund) erzeugte, zu spielen (was ich schon einmal für ein MM-Thema gemacht hatte). Eine Idee in letzter Minute gestern am späteren Abend :-)
Ein interessantes Detail am Garn, das ich so zuvor noch nicht wahrgenommen hatte, ist die Zweifarbigkeit des Fadens. Offensichtlich besteht Nähgarn nicht nur aus Fäden einer Farbe. Ich vermute, dass der weiße Faden aus einer Kunstfaser ist, um die Reißfestigkeit des Garnes zu erhöhen. Bitte "Z" drücken!
Entwickelt in Luminar 3: Accent-AI-Filter bei 30, kleine und mittlere Details auf 100 angehoben (nur Spulen und Fäden), Farbstich entfernen mit der Methode 2 bei 20; und in ON1 Photo RAW habe ich noch die Lichter "gereinigt" ("purify highlights").
Ich wünsche Euch eine schöne, kühle(re) Woche, liebe Flickr-Freunde!
Now the seagull may have thought this was a wily squirrel out to pillage the supply of Wonder Bread but I found him to be quite friendly and almost tame. Living in the park by the beach I imagine this little guy had become accustomed to the rewards of cute behaviour. Jack Darling Park is often filled with people packing picnic lunches who are more than willing to share bits with squirrels and seagulls--it's half the fun of going there and a smart squirrel learns how to work the crowd.
This was taken as he was apparently contemplating how to gain access to the bread-filled bag I'd brought with me and was just waiting until I'd turned my back in order to plunder the goods.
It's all about strategy when you're a squirrel surrounded by greedy gulls.
:-)
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My portfolio: www.hollycawfieldphotography.net/
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PURE PLAY, inspired by the setting sun. There is hardly any practical functionality in this behaviour of wild geese. The end of the first March day this year.
Took my old E-M1 gen.1 with me, with stills on my mind. The camera has poor video, but the scene was irresistible.
Wild geese make a distinct sound and have a demeanour which is not always the same. I often hear them at night, when they fly in small groups low above my flat 25 m high. Then it's more like navigating, a kind of sound radar. Or encouraging each other. Yesterday evening (5 March, not this recording) I was late coming back from the river shore, and the geese had been conspicuously calm for an hour... when I was at the middle of that big field populated by them, it was almost completely dark already. Camera already packed in my bag. Then something like exploded. The whole flock of around thousand or more wild geese put up a play for me. They suddenly burst into flight from the field on my right hand side and flew right over my head to the other half of the field where they all majestically landed. It was a sound of the thunder, all those huge wings flapping above me and the geese honking and calling. Like ƒƒƒ tutti of a large symphony orchestra. There were many many more birds than could fit in my lens even if I had the camera ready and small µ4/3 sensor somehow probing the dark. –Maybe I should take a sound recorder with me the next time... :)))
The occurrence on March 5th (not the modest one filmed here) brings me to my photographic Murphy's law: My greatest pics and videos are the ones I did not take. That's a rule that's haunting me for years and decades; my whole life actually. Like that one in the caption, just four days after this recorded clip. Please read the paragraph above, it does not pertain to the video clip above. Somehow, the birds always wait just enough —5 or 15 minutes after the sunset— for the light to fade out and then they appear in majestic formations and formidable numbers, to perform their low passes, big turns, amplified rhythmic calls, terrific landings and what not. Exactly that fraction too late when I can NOT film them any more with my modest µ4/3 gear, but can still observe the spectacle. No, they don't do it to spite me; it's just to keep their worthiest artistry beyond our proud-spirited set of captured things. It's rewarding enough to witness them. I am humbled and remain with my reoccurring phenomenon. Birds appearing just before sunrise or just after sunset with the regularity of Newton's physical laws.
Similar with the people :)
P. S. Contemplating the purchase of the G9 Mark II ever since... Now you know it's not the GAS (gear acquisition syndrome), but the GIS (gees inspired syndrome).
֎⃣ SOOC
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File name: P3010033
Many people dislike Magpies because they eat eggs and nestlings of other birds, and because of superstitious beliefs. Magpies do raid nests, but that is their natural behaviour, something that they have always done. Many people also think that Magpies are to blame for declines in songbirds but research by the BTO using 35 years of annual bird monitoring data showed no evidence that increased numbers of Magpies have caused declines in songbirds, and that it is prey numbers that influence predator numbers, not the other way round. In fact it showed that where Magpies were doing well, songbirds were doing well too, so a healthy habitat is good for both predators and prey.
Magpies are highly territorial and a nesting pair will defend their territory against other Magpies. Nesting Magpies are aware of nesting songbird activity near to their nests and will often predate these nests. But in suburban gardens there aren't too many dense thorny thickets so Magpies have little trouble finding and accessing the nests. So in the vicinity of a suburban Magpie nest they can have a localised effect on nesting success of songbirds, but there is no effect at the population level.
People are often alarmed by seeing large groups of Magpies but these are usually non-breeding birds that cannot find an unoccupied territory. One study shot Magpies and analysed their stomach contents during the nesting season and found that these flock birds were mainly eating worms, flies and beetles, the same as they do outside the nesting season. This contrasted with territorial nesting Magpies, whose diet did comprise eggs and nestlings during that season.
I went looking for migratory birds outside of the city, and the only thing that let me down was the weather. I had taken a few days off work after a difficult file had ended, and I wanted to be away from the crowds flocking to Mud Lake. The plan was to be alone, in woods or on water, and to just try out some different places. I packed food and had no interactions with people.
Of course the weather was not entirely cooperative. On this afternoon, fog blew in as the skies darkened, and after I had staked out a natural hide of the edge of some water. In for a penny, in for a pound; and then a small flock of Red-breasted Mergansers joined me. While the surface-level fog was a pain it was also kind of neat.
I think these birds are very beautiful, and they were engaging in their distinctive mating behaviours (the males extend their necks in awkward ways and partially submerge - it is worth looking for on youtube and it is tough to explain). I got a lot of different images, but this one is my favourite. This bird is one of the ‘losers’ in the mating behaviours, chased to the shore so that more dominant males could compete for the lone female. He was standing in a couple of inches of water behind some raised earth, looking on, and the fog shrouded him. I was a bit of a loser too as I rolled into the water (accidentally) to secure this image.
I may post another image from this experience. Lying on the edge of the water is an ‘all-in’ commitment: you are going to photograph water birds, you are going to get mucky, and there may be all kinds of other things happening that you will miss. You can’t suddenly sit up because you saw a great Warbler, or you frighten away the water birds from whom you had been hidden. It is great when it works out though. And sometimes there are surprises.
The name kestrel is given to several members of the falcon genus, Falco. Kestrels are most easily distinguished by their typical hunting behaviour which is to hover at a height of around 10–20 metres over open country and swoop down on prey, usually small mammals, lizards or large insects. Other falcons are more adapted to active hunting in flight. Kestrels are notable for usually having mostly brown in their plumage.
These huge boulders are called glacial erratics ... dropped here like this eons ago when the glaciers that covered the island during the last ice age melted.
This is not really erratic behaviour for erratics, since it is not uncommon to find them perched in precarious places such as this. These are up on top of the Annieopsquotch Mountains. I have a photo on my photostream taken from the other side. A photo that really is an optical illusion. This one is a straight on photo taken just today.
www.flickr.com/photos/33774669@N00/4463751866/in/dateposted/
it appears to me that the bird on the left is begging for a meal from the (parent?) bird on the right. This is the only time I can recall seeing this behaviour by a heron after fledging the nest.
Hooray! Anyone who follows my photostream and the activities of feeding birds, mostly native Australian cockatoos called Galahs will know that we have our favourites, those amongst the number we identify by name because of their special visual or behavioural characteristics and/or we are able to feed by hand.
Pretty well at the top of that special heap are Wingman (front) and Mrs W (Wingman) who have been very regular visitors for three years now. Jenny got this shot this morning and we were over the moon to see him as we thought we had lost him.
Firstly, to recap, his name is Wingman (one day I will tell the long story about that name), because he has two bad wings, you can see the worst one, the right wing, that diminish his ability to fly as well as these birds can. They are masters. He has trouble getting lift and always flies in stages. He is married to Mrs W as they mate for life. He is a wonderful husband and partner, and up until more recent times they have always come together and go to the same location where they get their very own food dish which he protects like a gladiator.
In more recent times, they have been arriving up to four times per day.
And then about a week ago, nothing! We saw her a couple of times but not Wingman and we were terribly worried that we had lost him. I in particular have been devastated, as you may have guessed, I love them both dearly. Then yesterday, we thought we saw him arrive but not come down from the power lines over the back. And then finally this morning, he returned...oh what a relief. And during the busy morning, they returned several times. Oh, what a feeling indeed. We suspect they had kids this year and the change in behaviour has been mostly driven by the needs of nesting, fledging and being good parents.
I recognise some of those megalomaniacal male tendencies you are describing, and why wouldn’t I (DUH!)? I know that ‘lost boy’ behaviour. It’s even attractive until one reaches a certain age, then it slopes off through unfortunate, and heads downhill rather swiftly towards downright tragedy. Applying the brakes at that stage is no party, let me tell you. Sometimes I feel as if I had been worn down up to the knees, a would-be demi-legged, own-trumpet-blowing, Falstaff, (if only those Jesuits had gotten hold of me) but then this isn’t about me. All these men searching for mammies, what can I say other than sorry about my gender, and thank Yahweh that I am a cis-gender homo (can I call myself that anymore?).
I think you can tell that I have arrived at the point that I am at, now, not at all sure what I am, or am not, permitted to call myself. I fear that I, at last, know what and who I am, but I am not at all sure if being that is acceptable in an evolving world. Luckily, we will all be dead soon enough. Now that’s something to really look forward to for the terminally bewildered. I like the idea of ‘A Death’ as the inflection point of this ‘Comedy’ we are constructing. I have that funny death story to tell yet properly. That one where Jeffrey suddenly shot upright, screaming at his parents who were quibbling over what to watch on the TV. He screamed fiercely at them “I’m dying, I get to choose the video!”. It was gloriously well said. I do love the tyranny of the dying. I do love the abject tyranny of the victim (my specialty). Feck it, I will go the whole hog. I do love tyranny. I also love saying ‘Feck’, when everyone understands that you are insinuating another vowel in the place of that ‘e’. I love that feck is proper and Irish, a softening of that blow, like a dropped ‘h’, that sort of softening and lilting.
He chose 'Singing in the Rain' and collapsed back into bed raving madly about having to make three different types of pies to prepare for some party or other in his head.
I did my job. I pressed the button and released more morphine, through the catheter in his chest, awash in the 'poor meeees'.
mea culpa, mea culpa,mea máxima culpa.
Later, I made a drawing about his wonderful, life-affirming, self-assertion. I photographed myself beside it, the drawing that is, but discovered, whilst looking at it later, that I seemed to have disappeared.
I guess that's how things go. (Secretly, I love removing myself (with photoshop), but don't tell anyone).
John: A fine eulogy, full of life.
Ruin: I want to reply to this, a little later. I might even have to go into the third person, to get a little distance from the answer, and what it means. This will be an important part of 'the book'. I am putting this here as a sort of commitment.
Anyway, to start, another extended version of this 'story' begins under this photo (the title in parentheses below) below this. It starts with “I’m dying, I get to choose the video”, about halfway down. But I now want to write something a lot more personal, a lot more 'private' perhaps. So far I have been writing about what I call the 'Wild Geese', a recognised phenomenon in Irish history and culture. Now I want to talk about something a little more close to home, and that's the cuckoo gene. That born out of desperation taking up domicile in the 'nests' of other birds, that type of 'taking over'. I think of it slightly relative to that 'banquet idea' that excess, like a pheasant being stuffed with a quail, and the quail in turn being stuffed with a starling, or any smaller bird, that decadence. Anyway, I want to look at that goose initially stuffed with a cuckoo, that idea of the self as a desperate exploiter, but also looking at it as a survival strategy, a Darwinian ploy, even. I am still brewing it in my head, so it will stutter along.
‘On Universal Innocence and The Forgiveness of Freckles’.
But back to Geese and cuckoos.
‘The Rôti Sans Pareil Is 17 Birds Stuffed Inside Each Other and It Is Delicious’. So ran the headline.
"The recipe calls for a bustard stuffed with a turkey stuffed with a goose stuffed with a pheasant stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a duck stuffed with a guinea fowl stuffed with a teal stuffed with a woodcock stuffed with a partridge stuffed with a..."
There is a sort of madness there, manifesting, perhaps, one of the reasons we don't deserve to be here at all. Not that deserving has anything to do with it anyway.
Chickenman, Wild Geese, and now Cuckoo, this sounds like I am on a type of fowl trajectory. Here's to soaring, or swansonging, or attempting both, even!
John: The cuckoo was a popular metaphor in the 1950s, quite possibly in response to the aftermath of WWII and your revival gives it greater depth. One of the explorations of Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow was the impossibly undermined reconstruction of male identity, no matter what roots they sought to revive. The cuckoo, with its echo of cuckold, the returners from war rewarded with the ghost of doubt of paternity, puts all into those same murky depths of identity which artists equally embrace or flee. As ancient mythology evidences, we have always had a need to understand and belong. Post-wars and natural disasters our need for the perceived solidity of information is greatly enhanced. Technically, having a family formed of my partner's and her ex's three daughters, I am a cuckoo.
Apart from the actual people (greatly rewarding) I have also wondered if I was defying my sense of unbelonging by consciously electing to be the cuckoo, which, unlike being an artist, is I believe a choice.
Ruin: Yes, that would be true, that returning soldier thing. I would guess it has always been the case, have soldiers not been returning since time immemorial? I didn't make the connection between cuckoo and cuckold, a 'duh!' moment for me. Of course, it is there. I particularly like the cuckold personage. If I was going by the evidence of Reddit, or wherever, cuckolding seems to be enjoying a huge revival in the fetish world currently. I would guess it was all part and parcel of dealing with the diminished, and further diminishing, male, that area of 'twixt and 'tween being generated by an excess of hormone disruptors now in the environment (in plastics and whatever). But I have a whole theory about that relative to the possibility of the human animal evolving from sexual reproduction to bifurcatory splitting, that laboratory-assisted dividing known as cloning, the copying of the self, whilst we are at that point of the Y chromosome being, apparently, at 3% of its former glory. Scientists tell us that it appears to be stable at 3%, but infinity is funny like that relative to stability.
The only place we would differ on here is that "unlike artist", which I am pretty sure we might partially agree on anyway. I don't see making art (or writing, even), any form of communication really, as a 'choice'. I see it both as an instinct and a compulsion, and for the most part a disruptive nuisance, an itch. I would have to fight very hard to resist it, that scratching called art making or communicating. I would have to go totally against my 'natural' self.
But this is something I will continue to work out until I no longer can, compulsively, this awful/wonderful itch. I like writing here, simply because it is immediate communication, and sometimes the feedback like yours is invaluable. There is this idea that writing needs to be done alone, like art, but I don't think that is necessarily 'true'. I think you have to work it out the best way you can, and there are no rules.
When I quote you, should I call you John Seven, or just John? I have been calling you John, but thought I should ask. As in "John: A fine eulogy, full of life." Would you prefer John Seven?
John: Well, I don't know what went wrong with my sentence construction there, as I intended to state that artist is not a choice (nor a guarantee of quality). Now amended. Regarding my name - John used to be the skinhead universal form of address, as in "Y'want bovver Jon?"
It was also, in the the year I was born, the Mohamed, It was also, in the year I was born, the Mohamed, Muhammad, Muhamad, or Mohammad of its day, the most common male name in the world. In its many forms - Ian, Iain, Ifan, Sean, Shaun, Shane, Jens, Jean, Joan, Johan and so on.
I am happy with whatever you choose.
Ruin: I guessed we were on the same page relative to art, or writing, this 'fever' to communicate is uncontrollable. It’s not a choice at all. But I feel the same about this cuckoo behaviour and this catfishing too. I see them both as survival manoeuvres, generated mostly out of desperation. Anyway, that's the point I will be starting from for this 'chapter'. I will be using the text generated here, and pulling it through the pronoun mangle, writing it in the third person, to get some distance, some overview.
Blimey, he realised, his behaviour had been stark raving cuckoo. He found it as difficult to think about as to write about this, but felt in the writing of it, that some liberation might be found there. The working out of it was going to have to be in the present, but there would be references and stories that harked back to his ‘Wild Goose’ history, his wandering, his running away. He knew too that he was going to have to stop playing with words, stop trying to entertain, this was not the way to go. By this he meant that “meself” as opposed to myself, that ‘cod Irish’, that “at all, at all”. That would naturally fall away anyway, as he moved away from childhood, as he learnt to speak, to communicate, even. His leaving Ireland was, in a way, his learning to talk. Before that period, he had been that oft-described stuttering, nervous entity, floundering between church-generated guilt and maintaining his secret—that abuse, that incest, that familial interference that could only serve to completely sunder him from family, and any semblance of security, of a feeling of belonging or of ever having been nurtured. It was nobody’s fault. Those who haven’t been nurtured have no idea how to nurture, and similarly those who have never been protected have no way of knowing how to proffer protection. Both his parents had, in their turn, been abandoned as children. It was all they knew. This was somehow part and parcel of the history of that emerald island, that history of hundreds of years of abuse. That this abuse caused Irish literature to blossom, in that foreign tongue, English, is one of those creative offshoots of abuse, one of those ‘miracles’, as his mother used to say, describing anything good or beneficial, a silver lining around those multi-generational deadening clouds.
He was angry, sad, and excited when he discovered that he had to leave to survive, that he had to give up everything and everyone he had ever known, and set out alone for that pagan land on the other side of the Irish Sea. Looking back, he liked that this cuckoo also described a sort of madness; other than the survival instinct it became somewhat renowned for, it also described that ‘stark raving’ idea, that there had always been this connection we humans make about this misunderstood creature, and its development of certain Darwinian characteristics generated by its struggle to survive.
Stealing somewhat from the title of the book by Mr Foster Wallace (of the multiple footnotes on footnotes), he suspected that he had come to that point where he might, at last, ‘Consider the Cuckoo’.
John: This riffing on a thought, expanding out to discover surprises and similarities is a thing of wonder.
Ruin: It's a bit strange to be working it out in 'real time' here. I am literally working it through in my head as I write it. It becomes a self-justification, of sorts, I guess. I will tie it in, somehow, to the main theme. I am coming out of that chapter which has to do with childhood, and heading towards London, via a year in Liverpool—that age-old Irish route—through Aristophanes' The Birds, from which the expression 'Cloud Cuckoo Land' comes, through Mr Darwin, on the way towards New York, and 'Rack and Ruin'.
But yes, he was heading for ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’, only inasmuch as it was to be totally unfamiliar; there was the madness there of difference, a way of thinking that was foreign to everything he knew. The old rules just didn’t apply, but there were also new rules to learn.
On Universal Order
Or blessed lack thereof.
Dear Rack,
I suspect we have both had our moments with each other, compassionate and understanding, and the opposite. I have never felt particularly worthy, but that’s a universal, some dreadful leftover from a hideously insecure childhood, neglectful parents, an absent alcoholic father and an abusive uncle—all that palaver, that stuff of amateur melodrama, probably endemic, commonplace even, on that little emerald jewel called ‘home’. The thing is, or the pedestrian tragedy is, that you don’t really realise what you are carrying with you when you set off into the world alone; when you put on your walking shoes, you have no idea what your coping mechanisms are, how skew-whiff they might be relative to a world out there, a place that has most likely generated another type of abuse, a foreign variant, one which you have no experience of at all. It’s not unlike our beloved Omicron, another spiked battering ram, something that you might survive or not.
Yes, it’s the same old same old, those ‘Wild Geese’ setting off, full of youthful energy and dreams of conquest, already weighed down by their own undoing. Compassion was easy for me when we met. You had, apparently, fallen at the first hurdle, or so it seemed. I was very wrong about that. Wrecked Rack was phoenix-like. I didn’t know that then, though that constant re-igniting can work a certain ruin on the old cadaver. I notice a chemical smell in my urine, and I was wondering if you do too. We are now part chemical; a bit like our beloved de Selby’s part bicycle, part human. We have been absorbing chemicals now for decades, and you even two decades more than I have. One cannot help but wonder how they have an effect on our very DNA, our day-to-day thoughts, our moods and our hopes, or despairs. But, butt, chicken butt, as I like to say, I have decided to make their influence positive. We are a hybrid, a new man and woman, a chemically enhanced super-breed of survivors.
How’s that for famous last words?
We are like no one else, though this is true of everyone. Now we have the added input of our screens, our hard-drives and external devices, all brain-enhancers and exploitable. These are our external memories, as that innate ability to remember slopes off, and it’s nothing less than a frigging ‘Universal Superhighway’. Nobody has had that before, though I would question as to whether this is a recurring phenomenon, forgotten but recurring, on an infinite, ever-expanding loop (call me loopy). Heloise and Abelard could have done with a bit of that, but they managed anyway, so how can we not rape and pillage the universe with this magnificent, unimaginable tool at our disposal? The only thing that holds us back is our massive insecurity, and our excuses. But the proffering of these to each other, the unashamed exposing of them, is the beginning of this Knausgaardian ‘struggle’, and we have been doing this for almost 30 years. We have the capacity to cross-germinate, to percolate Sontag’s ‘Camp’ through Knausgaard’s, and the other tyrant’s, ‘Kampf’—that tragedy and camp comedy combined. I would like a little more of that ‘fun’ back, the laughing at the absurdity of it all combined with the realisation of what we wrought, and how blindly reactive it was, and we were.
It would be wonderful to laugh, and scream, together again.
"But I wonder if you share my feeling that to write anything sufficiently accurate and engaging, and actually get it over all the hurdles of publication, and risk the ultimate disappointment of remaindering ... Oh, I could not do it now."
No, I have no intention of 'publishing', or even presenting what I am writing and thinking about, other than on Flickr. I find that I do things in 4-year tranches. The idea is just to sort out some of the mess I made, that cacophony of images I generated whilst trying to understand.
I am looking for where I didn't manage to communicate, although some of it ended up in museums (with appropriate puffing out of chest). A 4-year tranche is a challenge, a challenge because of age and the dragging of another 'fatal' disease along with one through a pandemic. Blissfully, science has intervened yet again, somewhat offering respite, temporarily, from the Horsemen. I got that second AstraZeneca yesterday, but am still jealous of those enjoying the intervention of the mRNA vaccines into the livestream of their DNA. If we are going to be so interfered with in that way, I want to be one of the first on that cutting edge of the glorious new Science religion (that I love)! I would have loved to have been the Musk of death, that space pioneer and not the smell. Although, one appears to have missed that boat, along with many others, for now. But there is an acute awareness of their fetlocks and broomsticks—of those aforementioned Horsemen, that is, and their Woo and Woe.
Publishers, Bookshops, Museums and Galleries are over. Didn't you get the memo?
At the same time, that remainder bin is essential. It is, more or less, where we all end up, the good and the bad, those who write with clarity and those who lick and salve their purple wounds in public.
You know that I love purple, in a hate purple sort of way. Don't start me on Orange.
A starling with a beakful of larvae. It kept putting them down and picking them up again, as if to get them properly arranged before flying back to its nest.
I found these two trees while walking in a local forest park. The pair looked out of place in amongst the conifers, especially with the larger tree apparently reaching out a spindly almost threatening “hand” while looming over the smaller timid looking tree........ strange what tricks your mind plays on you while alone in the forest 😆.
Scorpion fly female (Panorpis communis) stealing prey from spider's web. Dorset, UK.
Scorpion flies are 'kleptoparasites' and often steal prey from spiders' webs. It was spinning like a top in the breeze at the end of this silk thread.
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bullfinch ~ pyrrhula pyrrhula (behaviour)
RSPB Amber status list.
While I was sitting in the garden I saw a pair of bullfinches. Even though the female kept flying off I thought it was worth trying to take a photo of them both together. As soon as she came back I took this photo as I watched while she accepted food from the male. 1/400 was not a fast enough shutter speed to freeze her movement and flapping wings unfortunately.
It isn't always easy to puck a fish from the water, it often takes skill and patients. George being very skilled at fishing may spend an hour checking different locations within the estuary. If the fish stays still it has a better chance if it runs...game on. By the way that is also true of people, never run from a bear. : )
Poor old Poppy! She had to endure yet another trip to the vet school today, with an ongoing health issue that has puzzled us and the vets since the 1 November last year.
Today, it seems, we finally have a clue (and so far seem to have been looking in the wrong places for the answer!)---it seems there is a problem in her nose, which only really came to light when we viewed some photos I recently took of her!, so now she's booked in for yet another full work-up (CT, MRI and scope) on Tuesday.
It's going to be a bit of an anxious wait until Tuesday, but we are trying to be pawsitive for Poppy :D
This is her still managing to enjoy herself (waiting for the arrival of her ball from above) on the beach recently.
Juvenile
Brown Thrasher BRTH (Toxostoma rufum)
tentatively or
experimentally feeding
Carmichael, Saskatchewan, Canada
DSCN9636
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Mike McGrenere found one in Greater Victoria July 11th...Great Find Mike!
If you don't like Kestrels look away now lol, a couple of habitat/behavioural shots and a portrait, I don't think that's a bad day, considering they are all different birds from different areas, if they did come together I'd imagine it would be one hell of a scrap :-)
The name kestrel is given to several different members of the falcon genus, Falco. Kestrels are most easily distinguished by their typical hunting behaviour which is to hover at a height of around 10–20 metres (35–65 ft) over open country and swoop down on prey, usually small mammals, lizards or large insects.
This was interesting behaviour. The Kite was more than happy to sit on fence posts all around us and very close but was not happy to be on the ground. It would swoop off the posts and snatch things off the ground and return to a different post.
Initially we thought that it was going after prey but each time it came up with a stick of some variety. It would transfer the stick from it's claws to it's beak in flight and then land on a post. It would then peck at the stick, sometimes snapping bits off. At this point we thought perhaps nesting behaviour, but every time it eventually discarded the stick and started the process again. Maybe there was some food involved.
These three photos show the foot to beak transfer.
(Clare)