Mini-post and some music links, and, at the end, a poem.
Animals
Lens couldn't find a source for this meme; it might be unique to the Mirror. Lens mentioned that similar cormorant pictures were used in articles about how cormorants were the world's most hated birds. (The ones who've not been trained to fish for humans have been known to steal fish from humans.) They can become overcrowded and messy in a hurry, but I like the cormorant's silly grin and the way it can do anything any other large bird can do, only none of it ever quite so well. The cormorant is too heavy to soar when it flies, waddles when it walks, and soaks up water and has to come out to dry when it swims. It can live under water for a few minutes at a time. Somehow, between its permanent grin and its enthusiastic attitude,it looks as if it's having fun anyway.
Technically in their own ornithological "family," because they have some structural features that are unique, are the anhingas. In the South American culture that named this genus it was seen as an unfriendly spirit, a "devil bird." (In the Tupi language it sounds like "a-ying-a"; in English it's "an-HING-ga.") Though not particularly aggressive it probably startled the long-ago swimmer who first gave it that name. Europeans have always seen them as a slightly more attractive kind of cormorant. In Spanish their name is cormoran real, the Royal Cormorant, just as the peacock is pavo real, the Royal Turkey.
Photo from Wikipedia.
Both genera are able to swim, dive, walk, and fly. Their weak point is that, when swimming in pursuit of fish, either diving or swimming too long will allow water to soak in through their feathers. Then the birds feel chilly and come out and stand in the sun, waiting to dry off. While the plain black cormorant gets called things like "old molting crow," the anhinga displays a cape of black and white feathers that look fine even while the bird is wet. Life is not fair. Anyway, what amuses most people, and intimidated the person who named the anhinga, is that while the birds swim, their feathers gradually absorb water, lose air, and allow the birds to swim lower and lower in the water until the whole body is submerged and only the head and neck stick out, periscope style. The necks invariably remind some people of snakes--if one could imagine a snake standing up vertically in deep water.
Photo from AllAboutBirds.com. Anhingas fly "better" than cormorants--they can really soar, like eagles--and walk even more awkwardly. People who see them flying or perching usually call anhingas elegant, graceful, even magnificent; a newspaper reporter who saw his first one walking headlined the article about the strange bird at the local lake "Is this the world's ugliest bird?" (No; that would be the Great Cormorant.)
Both genera bite if they feel threatened, and the anhinga's heronlike beak can be as dangerous as a heron's. Both are mostly black, with variations in some species; young American anhingas have beige necks and brown bodies; adult males turn dark gray or black, adult females usually stay beige and brown. Both, like other predatory birds, suffered drastic population declines in the mid-twentieth century and are beginning to recover their numbers now. Every few years of the present century someone has reported an American Anhinga or Double-Crested Cormorant straying further north than its range had shrunk to when baby-boomers and our teachers were learning about these things.
There's a wide variety of cormorants, large and small. Some are adapted to survive at low temperatures and live in cold climates. All four species of anhingas, however, look alike except for color patterns, and live in warm climates, though they've strayed up to New York and Ohio in hot weather.
Both kinds of birds can also be kept as pets and trained to share fish with humans, though all fish-eating birds, and the considerable mess they leave where they've perched, smell like dead fish. Though not really affectionate (or intelligent) they can learn to come when called and tolerate being handled by their humans. People have eaten anhingas, though nobody's ever claimed that they tasted good.
If you become interested in these birds and share your interest with housemates and neighbors, they may feel relieved and not give you a hard time when you decide to keep a few chickens.
Music
Wanktones.
Celtic Thunder.
Annie Lennox.
Madness.
Voice Play attempt a Toto song.
John Prine.
Grace Jones.
Bob Dylan. (This song may be an optimistic choice. It still feels like August here.)
Linda Ronstadt.
Exercise music.
Pink.
Motley Crue.
Al Stewart.
Elton John.
Winston Peters (of Trinidad), the Mighty Gypsy.
Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The Cure.
The Moody Blues.
The Weakerthans.
Poetry
Another observation about the disposability of the male...
No comments:
Post a Comment