Originally posted by Richard Tarleton
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Not really, I'm afraid. I did wonder about Song Thrush for the first one - I have heard them use phrases in their songs reminiscent of that rhythm. The second one could conceivably be a Coal Tit - perhaps. -
Oh yes!Originally posted by Vox Humana View Post
Song thrush - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWSyv_E8Pxc
That's a sort of giddy-up, giddy-up around 1.32 - you might well have this right.
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Song thrushes are quite easy, as everything is repeated - a huge variety of phrases, but the key to recognition is that you hear each phrase (usually) three times in quick succession. So yes, "giddy-up, giddy-up, giddy-up, do, do, do" could very well be it, good call. The Collins Bird Guide describes the song as "dogmatic".Originally posted by Lat-Literal View PostOh yes!
Song thrush - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWSyv_E8Pxc
That's a sort of giddy-up, giddy-up around 1.32 - you might well have this right.
I don't think coal tit would have been loud enough to interrupt Scaredy Squirrel
As I said, it's tricky working from someone else's mnemonics - the key part of your description, that would have given the game away (repetition three times) was missing!Comment
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Mrs A. saw a flock of waxwings in the middle of Leicester yesterday. Who said you don't get wildlife in a city. Admittedly it was in a leafy (and presumably berry-laden?) park...Clarendon Park to be exact.Comment
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Fabulous! Lucky Mrs A. They are such wonderful birds, always looking incredibly smart - and pretty tame too.Comment
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... all I know of waxwings derives from the opening lines of Nabokov's 'Pale Fire'.
Which I must re-read...
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More prosaically, they show a marked preference for supermarket car parks (those with cotoneaster bushes, particularly).Comment
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....and according to the RSPB website, when they appear locally in large numbers to strip berries, it is called an irrruption. Whether or not Mrs A. witnessed an irruption is uncertain...except she was quite excited when she got home earlier today.
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Dogmatic.Originally posted by Richard Tarleton View PostSong thrushes are quite easy, as everything is repeated - a huge variety of phrases, but the key to recognition is that you hear each phrase (usually) three times in quick succession. So yes, "giddy-up, giddy-up, giddy-up, do, do, do" could very well be it, good call. The Collins Bird Guide describes the song as "dogmatic".
I don't think coal tit would have been loud enough to interrupt Scaredy Squirrel
As I said, it's tricky working from someone else's mnemonics - the key part of your description, that would have given the game away (repetition three times) was missing!
I have a tendency to set out everything in detail while missing the key fact. The key fact I may have inadvertently omitted in our earlier exchange is that there is something that reckons itself to be a bird sanctuary just a road away from here. Nevertheless, others noticed what I noticed and it really was unusual - almost like being in a tropical rainforest and it was all before light. Perhaps the birds involved forgot to change their clocks. I don't know. Tweet of the Day today was the woodpigeon and I hoped it would enable me to review what I think of it. But it didn't come across especially well except perhaps in its china like appearance. Maybe other people like it? I would be interested to hear if they do.Comment
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Hate the things. Hoovers on legs. Got to admire their success though.Originally posted by Lat-Literal View PostComment
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...and as T.H. White acknowledged, pigeons are wonderful fliers, not just in stamina but in terms of their maneuverability [have I spelled that correctly?].
As to their character, he says [in The Goshawk]....
...it became impossible to resent the caution of the pigeons. What a peace-loving but prudent race they were, not predatory and yet not craven. Of all the birds, I thought, they must be the best citizens, the most susceptible to the principles of the League of Nations. They were not hysterical, but able to escape danger. For panic as an urge to safety they substituted foresight, cunning and equanimity. They were admirable parents and affectionate lovers. They were hard to kill. It was as if they possessed the maximum of insight into the basic wickedness of the world, and the maximum of circumspection in opposing their own wisdom to evade it. Grey quakers incessantly caravanning in covered wagons, through deserts of savages and cannibals, they loved one another and wisely fled.
Last edited by ardcarp; 31-03-17, 07:52.Comment
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... I like wood-pigeons [ Columba palumbus ]. And they make good eating. I remember my brother as a boy killing two pigeons with a catapult, and my mother cooking a most satisfactory pie...
London pigeons [ Columba livia domestica ] on the other hand - ghastly things. And I don't imagine they wd taste particularly nice.Comment
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Wood pigeon - great wild food
Very few places left where you can see the city pigeon's wild ancestor unpolluted by hybridisation - I knowingly saw my first on the cliffs at Mussenden Temple, NI. White rump, black wing bars. The process hastened by racing pigeons who think sod this for a game of soldiers and decide to stay put in some such lovely spot rather than fly back to a sooty urban pigeon loft. Their failure to return invariably blamed by their late owners on predation by peregrines, which may be true some of the time but given the number of ringed rock doves one sees living happily around our western coasts is much less than they think.Comment
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Curlews sounding over Aisgill in remotest Cumbria this a.m. as we watched the Flying Scotsman steam upline.Comment
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Marvellous! Just seen the coverage on lunchtime news, Ribblehead Viaduct and all.....Comment
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