Real Fireworks

Here, for your 4th of July entertainment, are some real fireworks, photographed from space.  (The segment is silent and lasts only a few seconds.)

Bad Birds

This blog is for the birds.  Really.  If something relates to birds, we think you might be interested in it.  We certainly don’t waste your time talking about such silly things as the sexual peccadillos of politicians.

David and Bathsheba by Jan Matsys

Nonetheless, Governor Mark Sanford’s recent extramarital activities reminded  of us of a myth involving a bird.  Sanford, in one of his “apologies” last week compared himself to King David of the Old Testament who, Sanford said, fell as mightily as has Sanford.  Presumably Sanford was referring to David’s adulterous liaison with Bathsheba.

You will recall the story.  David sees Bathsheba without clothes on and is so smitten that he ends up arranging to have her husband killed off so he can marry her.  He does and is soon visited by a prophet who foresees many calamities as a result of his philandering.

Now on to the bird myth associated with the story.  In the story as told by the Midrash, Bathsheba is hidden behind some kind of screen, and is not visible to David.  But Satan wants to create trouble, so he comes to earth disguised as a bird which David tries to kill, perhaps with a sling shot.  The bird/Satan easily dodges the missile which then hits and knocks over the screen behind which the naked Bathsheba is standing.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Satan Cast Out of Heaven by Dore

This is not the first time we’ve come across Satan disguised as an innocent little bird.  Why was he trying to give birds a bad name?  They don’t deserve it, not even the pigeons.  David may also have learned that gratuitously trying to kill birds isn’t such a good idea either.

Interspecies Symphony

We haven’t forgotten you and will be back later this week.  In the meantime, the birds of our yard all seem to have fledglings and they are eating us out of house and home.

And, as you can see, no interspecies rivalries are allowed to interfere with feeding time.  This particular symphony began with a grosbeak playing the melody, the House Finches doing harmony, and the goldfinches on the flutes.

Not for nothing are they called grosbeaks.

The grosbeak was soon replaced by the Ladderback Woodpecker and the White-wing Dove.

The Ladderback came back for a curtain call.  (The Hummingbirds were supposed to be playing the trumpets in the background but they were on strike at the time.)

Messenger Birds

For a bird of the air shall carry the voice,
and that which hath wings shall tell the truth.

Ecclesiastes 10:20

Grackles

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

City of Mudville, California v. The Great-tailed Grackle

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
[June 16, 2009]

JUSTICE SOOTHER delivered the opinion of the Court.

The town of Mudville, California, allows its citizens to bring private law suits to stop public nuisances.  The municipal ordinance defines a public nuisance as “Anything which is . . . indecent or offensive to the senses.”  The nuisance must, “Affect at the same time an entire community or neighborhood, or any considerable number of persons.”

Mildred Thoroughgood brought this lawsuit, demanding that the authorities of Mudville do something about the Great-tailed Grackles which live there.  The grackles, Ms. Thoroughgood claims, are “offensive to the senses” and must be eradicated.  A judge in Mudville agreed with her and ordered the birds extirpated.

The birds appeal, asking this Court to reverse the judgment below and dismiss the case.

Great-tailed Grackles are large birds with, as the name implies, large tails.  They live mainly west of the Mississippi River of the United States and often dwell together in large flocks, not unlike humans.  Foraging for seeds and insects, they go about making their living in fields and towns throughout the American Southwest and Southern California.

But, according to Ms. Thoroughgood, they make many unpleasant sounds.  Indeed one authority writes, “Song a series of loud, unpleasant noises: mechanical rattles, sliding tinny whistles, harsh rustling sounds, and sharp hard notes.”  (Sibley, Field Guide to Birds of Western North America, at 443)

No evidence to the contrary appearing, this Court accepts as fact that they make unpleasant sounds. We also note that even the renowned Cornell University refers to the poor birds as a “pest species.”

If that were all the evidence, we might be inclined to uphold the decision of the Mudville court that grackles are a pain and should be eliminated.  But that was not all the evidence.

The grackle population appears to grow with the human population.  This makes Great-tailed Grackles, like pigeons, an inevitable by-product of the rapid growth of the American West.   Like people, grackles find irrigation and urbanization beneficial. The only way to get rid of them is to get rid of the people.

Grackles are good parents too.  Most of the parental duties, it is true, are left to the females but males fiercely defend their nestlings and fledglings.  Interestingly, more females survive the first year than males.  That may explain the transient nature of their pair bonds and the flamboyant mating behavior of the males.  Nobody knows for certain how long they live, but one banded male lived for twelve years.

Finally, we find the testimony at trial of The Fat Finch persuasive.  Those people have a female Great-tailed Grackle living in their yard which has lost a leg.  This one-legged female is successfully rearing offspring.  The fledglings don’t seem to care that she has only one leg and neither does she.  Such tenacity in the face of adversity should be rewarded, not punished.

One-legged Grackle

The law of nuisance, as William Prosser once wrote, is an “impenetrable jungle.”  Nonetheless, we discern in this case application of that old legal maxim, “The law disregards grackles.”

Accordingly, we reverse the decision below and order the case dismissed.  Let the grackles go.

JUSTICE SCALITO, dissenting.

I hate nature.  I never go outside if I can avoid it.  I used to play tennis outdoors but found the unfiltered air disagreeable.  Moreover, I’ve never been west of the Mississippi and don’t intend to go.  Therefore, I am completely disinterested in the fate of Great-tailed Grackles.

But, because I hate nature and grackles are a part of nature, I hate grackles.  If the government wants to eradicate them I find nothing in my copy of the Constitution preventing it.

I dissent.

Life List

One of us just finished “Life List,” a new book by Olivia Gentile.  It’s a biography of Phoebe Snetsinger who saw more species of birds than any human before her.  Ms.  Gentile was interviewed this week in the New Yorker’s blog, The Book Bench.  Decscribing a trip to Kenya — to follow the path of one of Ms. Snetsinger’s birding trips — Ms. Gentile told them, “I had this sense that I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing—learning that life is about survival, mating, storing your food, caring for your young.”

If you need a reason for bird-watching, that is as good as any.

Birds, Burritos, and Bookstores

We are connoisseurs of birds, bookstores, and breakfast burritos.  Since most of you who read this blog love birds, we don’t need to explain that attraction.

bacon, green - smothered

Breakfast burritos may need a word though.  A breakfast burrito, for those unfortunate enough not to live in the southwestern United States, consists of scrambled eggs, bacon or sausage, hash browns, and chile; all rolled up in a flour tortilla.  Note the spelling: It is “chile” not “chili.”  Only cretins spell it with a final “i”.

If you eat the burrito in your car on the way to work or take it home, the chile is only inside the tortilla.  But the best way to eat one is at the restaurant so you can have it “smothered” in chile.  Personally, we prefer green chile, but it is not irrational nor immoral to order it with red chile.

The world’s best breakfast burrito comes from Casa de Benavidez in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  If you pass through town, get one.  Your order will be taken by Mike Hertzog who is a professional.  You need not waste words telling him that you want “a breakfast burrito with bacon and green chile.”  All you need say is, “bacon, green.”  He’ll take care of the rest.  If you are dining in, you can add “smothered.”  Other than that, save your breath.

The second best burrito can be found at Tia Sophia’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Unaccountably they make you order the individual ingredients, which is like telling a bartender you want a “gin martini.”  Since there is no other proper kind of martini except one made with gin, it is redundant to order a “gin martini.”  Rather like saying, “The Rio Grande River.” E.B. White called the martini, “The elixir of quietude.”

Which brings us to books, another elixir of quietude, and the world’s best bookstores.  There are more of those than breakfast burritos and it is not possible to objectively rank them.  It is a subjective exercise.  Everyone has their favorites and every community of any size has one. And think of places like New York City, the greater Boston area, and London.  You could spend a lifetime in all the great bookstores in just one of those cities.

But, like everyone else, we have our favorites.  Notably, all are small and locally-owned. Many are close by.  Bookworks in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where stacks of books are always on the floor, a sure sign you are in a world-class bookstore; The Collected Works in Santa Fe, Moby Dickens in Taos, and our best used-book store, Coas Books in Las Cruces.  Our favorite used-book store is, of course, Powells in Portland, Oregon. Going to Powells is like going on a camping trip into the wilderness: You should always let someone know where you are going and when you expect to return so help can be sent if you fail to come out.  Coas Books is much smaller, but has a nice selection of old birding books.  We went there on a raid just last week and sitting on the desk right now are two old Roger Tory Peterson books, a Golden Guide to Gamebirds, and a book of Eliot Porter’s bird photography.

At the top of our list of bookstores, especially since the demise of the Chinook in Colorado Springs, Colorado, sits Rakestraw Books of Danville, California.  Rakestraw is where you go to make discoveries.  The owner and staff read voraciously but with discrimination.  Then they stock the store with good books that you might not find otherwise, especially in this time of crisis in the book business and the near extirpation of book reviews in newspapers.

We suppose there might be a bad book in the store somewhere but we’ve not found it yet.  And if there is a “best-seller” in the store, it’s because it actually is a good read, not because some publisher paid for the shelf space.  The nature/birding section is small, but useful — the store’s strength is fiction, books that you take with you when you travel and don’t put down.  And, if you need books for children and don’t have the time to keep up with children’s literature, they have the best.

Yellow-billed Magpie

If all that isn’t enough reason to travel to Danville and go to Rakestraw’s, here is one more: It’s less than an hour to Yellow-billed Magpies which live only in Northern California.  You can add a Lifer and take home some good books too.

Rakestraw’s only drawback? You can’t get a decent breakfast burrito within 1,000 miles.

A Weighty Question

As you know, this blog is the son of the Fat Finch stores, the one on-line and the bricks and mortar one.  The bricks and mortar store — actually there are neither bricks nor mortar —  sits in a small and new shopping area.  Until recently, a small restaurant was also in the little center but it has closed.  (A new restaurant is on the way though.)  To properly understand this post, you should know also that, until the new restaurant opens, we are the only business in the shopping area.

A large cardboard recycling bin sits at the side where we dutifully recycle all the cardboard boxes that bring us our merchandise.  We were out there last week when a man in a car drove up, looking for boxes.  The conversation went like this.

Man – “Do you work at the restaurant?”
Us    – “No, the restaurant has gone out of business.”
Man – “Oh.  So do you work at the weight store?”

On reflection, we must admit the word “fat” does appear in our name.

A Mockingbird

Northern Mockingbird

A roadside stop, serenaded by a Northern Mockingbird, put us in mind of this by Randall Jarrell:

The Mockingbird

Look one way and the sun is going down,
Look the other and the moon is rising.
The sparrow’s shadow’s longer than the lawn.
The bats squeak: “Night is here.”; the birds cheep:
“Day is gone.”
On the willow’s highest branch, monopolizing
Day and night, cheeping, squeaking, soaring,
The Mockingbird is imitating life.

All day the mockingbird has owned the yard.
As light first woke the world, the sparrows trooped
Onto the seedy lawn; the mockingbird
Chased them off shrieking.  Hour by hour, fighting hard
To make the world his own, he swooped
On thrushes, thrashers, jays, and chickadees —
At noon he drove away a big black cat.

Now, in the moonlight, he sits here and sings.
A thrush is singing, then a thrasher, then a jay —
Then, all at once, a cat begins meowing.
A mockingbird can sound like anything.
He imitates the world he drove away
So well that for a minute, in the moonlight,
Which one’s the mockingbird?  Which one’s the world?

_________________________________
Photo Credit – Ryan Hagerty of the Fish and Wildlife Service

Peacocks

Correggio's Zeus with Io

In Greek mythology, Hera was Zeus’s wife.  In some versions of the myths she was also his older sister, but let that go.  You will remember that Zeus was not exactly faithful to Hera.  In fact, he seduced or raped anyone, mortal or immortal, who caught his eye.

Displeased with his philandering, Hera often caught him at it.  Zeus was always attempting to fool her by turning his paramours into various animals.

So it was with Io.  Just before Hera caught him in the act, he turned himslef into a cloud and the beautiful Io into a cow.  Hera was no dummy; she saw through his cloud disguise, suspected the cow was really a beautiful maiden, and demanded that Zeus give her the cow as a present.  With no handy way of refusing, Zeus did so.

Hera promptly turned the cow over to Argus, her trusted watchman, to keep an eye on the heifer.  Argus, depending on which version of the myth you choose, had either four eyes or 100 eyes.  We’re going with the 100-eyed version.  Argus always had several eyes wide awake with which to keep watch.  He rotated which eyes slept.

Zeus wanted Io back; so he sent Hermes, one of his sons, to get her.  Hermes accomplished the task by playing his pipes and telling such boring stories that Argus fell completely asleep, all 100 eyes of him.  Hermes beheaded him and ran off with the cow. Zeus turned the cow back into a beautiful maiden.  Who knows what he did after that, but you can guess.

“What’s all this got to do with birds?” you ask.

When Hera discovered her trusted watchman dead, she took all 100 of his eyes and put them on the tail of a peacock.

Peacocks are, of course, male peafowls.  The national bird of India, they live in semi-arid forests and grasslands, eating seeds, fruits, insects and small animals and reptiles.  The Phoenicians took them on their trading routes which is how they ended up in Egypt and the Middle East.  King Solomon brought them to Jerusalem.  (Kings 10:22, 2 Chron. 9:21)

In Egypt they told a different story about Argus who kidnapped Queen Isis, hid her in his castle, and announced that he was the new king of Egypt.  Osiris, the rightful king and husband of Isis, put a curse on Argus, turning him into a peacock and making all Argus’s spies eyes on Argus’s tail; thereby creating the children’s game, “I spy a . . . .”

In Islam, peacocks were thought to stand guard at the gates of Paradise.  A Kurdish sect believed they were messengers from God.  Ancient Christians thought the bird symbolized the mother church.  St. Augustine conflated peacocks with the mythical phoenix, holding that peacock flesh did not decay and was incorruptible.  It became a symbol of resurrection.  “By the peacock” was an oath of truth-telling for Christians, who often placed the bird in scenes depicting the manger of Jesus’ birth.

In Europe, the peacock’s scream was an evil omen, but Marie Antoinette didn’t care; she wore peacock feathers in her hair.  Until she lost it.

Murugan

In their native land of India, peacocks played many mythical roles. Indra sits on a peacock throne.  A peacock was the bird of Krishna who wore peacock feathers in his hair.  More successfully than Marie Antoinette.  (Peacocks molt annually so acquiring their feathers is not difficult nor fatal to the bird.) Skanda, the son of Shiva and brother of Ganesha, and his friend the god Murugan  rode peacocks as did Sarasvati, goddess of music, poetry and wisdom. Smoked peacock feathers were used to cure snake bites.  (We don’t recommend that actually. Better to go to the hospital.)

In China, peacocks were fertility symbols and young women could become pregnant by merely looking at one.  Later they — the peacocks — became the symbol of the Ming Dynasty.

And we’re still not finished.  If you live in the Southern Hemisphere you can see the constellation Pavo in your night sky.  Pavo means “peacock.”  It is one of the twelve southern constellations named by Dutch navigators in the 16th century.  The brightest star in the constellation is Alpha Pavonis which is another way of saying it is the alpha peacock.  The asterism within the constellation shaped like a saucer will lead you to the south if you can’t find the Southern Cross.  (One of us once went on a “barefoot cruise.”  It was my first time far enough south to see the Southern Cross.  So I asked the captain to point it out.  He did so.  A few minutes later one of the crewmen came up to me and told me the captain had it wrong and pointed to the true Southern Cross.  The crewman was right; the captain wrong. It’s a good thing that captain used GPS navigation, otherwise I might still be wondering around the southern oceans and unable to tell you all about peacock mythology.)

That would be a bad thing, wouldn’t it?

Don’t answer that.

_____________________________
The top photo of a peacock was taken by BS Thurner Hof.