"Oirish Paytriots " should at the very least know where our counties are FFS 🙄🤬🤬

#TraitorsAndKnuckleheads

I was hoping for a transcription by Aretas Saunders, who devised and promoted a really interesting graphical approach to recording bird vocalizations before the rise of sonographic analysers. But in the book he wrote on this, he stuck to North American birds.

drawing of a curlew with its long curved beak

Description of the curlew - eggs, nest, food, haunts, general notes. The notes say: the cry of the Curlew is well known, a sad, not-unmusical sound of 'curlwee' of which the '... wee' is heard most often. The cry is heard both by day and night as the Curlew is a night flyer. The brownish plumage is barred and patterned, the bill long and curved for mud and sand probing. On the Continent, the Curlew is a migrant, moving north in spring and then flying south in the early autumn. Here it is a year-round resident.

From Koch describing a recording of a curlew: "with scarcely a pause, we pass to the remarkable bubbling chorus or "song" uttered as the bird glides slowly through the air. It lasts just under ten seconds, working up to its climax in the two before the end. As aeroplane, although distant, can be heard plainly in the background and just as the chorus closes we catch the sound of a train starting some way off.

text from Bird Watching for Beginners: ".... but the curlew's song is a lovely sound, to many people the most thrilling of all spring voices."

How would you describe the sound of a curlew?

Here are some different descriptions we've found.

#WorldCurlewDay

1 & 2 - Spotting Birds, 1976
3 - More Songs of Wild Birds - Nicholson and Koch, 1949
4 - Bird Watching for Beginners - Campbell, 1952

screen grab of figure 2.7 on page 51 of Bruyninckx, J. L. M. (2013). Sound science: recording and listening in the biology of bird song, 1880-1980. [Doctoral Thesis, Maastricht University]. Maastricht University. https://doi.org/10.26481/dis.20130419jb] It shows a simple graphical representation of the 'curlew' sound of a curlew. It comprises a horizontal line at the base. From a little above the left end of the line a curve reaches upwards steeply at first and to the right and ends, now almost horizontal, a little to the right of the right end of horizontal line. Another curve, shorter this time, starts just to the right and slightly higher than the right end of the horizontal line. It starts at about 45 degrees and gets steeper. Above the upper end of this curve is a mark that looks like a small letter U without a tail. Under the graphical representation, in quotation marks—cur-ee. The author says this representation is from Rowan, W. M. (1925). A practical method of recording bird-calls. British Birds, 18(1), p. 18.

Here's William Rowan having a go:

Did he have a nut allergy?

Swallows trained as letter-carriers? Surely nott? Well the reference is wrong. The report is actually in The Zoologist vol. XIII, no. 154 (Oct. 1889). A crazy Frenchman had been training swallows from age 11 for 30 years and was almost there. Faster and harder to shoot than pigeons, you see.

Screen grab from an online copy of the new and revised edition of J. E. Harting's book 'A Handbook of British Birds' published 1901 (first ed published 1872). It shows a paragraph in the entry for the swallow (page 105). It reads: 'As to the speed of Swallows, see Zool., 1886, p. 299, 1888, p. 308, and 1895, p. 379. One killed by a golf-ball, Field, Sept. 12, 1891 ; another struck by a cricket-ball, Field, Aug. 25, 1894. Mr. Barrett of Wintershall, near Godalming, has a stuffed speciment which was killed by a cricket-ball bowled by F. Caesar, a well-known professional, during a match played at Godalming in 1849 or 1850.'

What? Fred Caesar—brother of the more famous cricketer Julius Caesar (and I ain't kidding)—killed a swallow in a cricket match at Godalming some day in 1849 or 1850 and Mr. Barrett had it stuffed for his collection? You can rely on Victorian bird books for the really important ornithological gen.

Rameau - Complete Works for Harpsichord + Presentation (recording of the Century : Scott Ross) YouTube video by Classical Music/ /Reference Recording

A few years ago I was listening to a lot of recordings of keyboard music by Couperin and Rameau, played on harpsichord where possible. When Rameau's 2ème gigue en rondeau came through the headphones, I was back in the Victoria Centre, family in tow. As it should sound: youtu.be/GRPYpjLP9qA?...

Loved this. Moved to the E. Mids early 00s, so missed the 20th century VC but do remember hastily dragging my young children to the Emett clock outside Boots whenever it struck the hour while there. Glad it was restored but it's not what it was. Isn't the sound much softer & flatter now?

It should be greater cause for pause -- and alarm -- that, at a time when we increasingly associate manifestos with mass murderers, the Silicon Valley elites can't stop writing manifestos.

This one does not disappoint.

That moon is only 32 hours old, less than 3% illuminated and looking fine as it sets with Venus following.

Clean forgot the 30th anniversary of François Mitterrand's last meal eaten on new year's eve 1995, his final course a couple of ortolans 'the guests in silence and the self-pleasing, pornographic slurps of the president filling the room like a dirge'.

www.esquire.com/news-politic...

That is presumably from a modern translation of Turner's book 'Avium precipuaram, quarum apud Plinium et Aristotelem mentio est, brevis et succinta historia'. The Birkhead book the quote above comes from is 'The Wisdom of Birds'.

Can't find my copy at the moment but in another of his books he says the bulfinch's ability to learn tunes 'has been known at least since the Middle Ages' & he quotes Turner (1544) 'It is the readiest bird to learn, & imitates a pipe very closely with its voice'.

Can't resist adding one I found today, in a Paul Muldoon poem 'Tithonus'. The third stanza goes:

nor the jinkle-jink
of your great-grandfather, the bank teller
who kept six shots of medicinal (he
called it "therap-
*utraquist*") whiskey like six stacks of
coppers

Have you looked at Tim Birkhead's book The Red Canary?

The DTI was all over what they then liked to call the information society, and IBM was frequently its most visible partner, e.g. with big stands at DTI-funded events designed to enthuse citizens and businesses.

Europe and the Global Information Society - Publications Office of the EU In its Brussels meeting of December 1993, the European Council requested that a report be prepared for its meeting on 24 - 25 June 1994 in Corfu by a group of prominent persons on the specific measure...

Don't forget the 1994 Bangemann report—'Europe and the Global Information Society Recommendations to the European Council'
op.europa.eu/en/publicati...

Twinned with the Information Society Initiative for businesses
web.archive.org/web/19980119...

You don't remember stuff like the IT for All initiative begun by the Tories at the end of 1996 and continued enthusiastically by the Blair government?
web.archive.org/web/19980121...

Walk on the wild side Britain’s countryside is in a bad way, even by the standards of fraught global ecologies, but sentimental and spiritual interpretations of its plight detract from the urgency.

Re-reading Wild Service, for a thing. Bloody hell. Here's what I made of it the first time around. engelsbergideas.com/reviews/walk...

Get Birding 🪶 Get Birding is the UK’s leading birdwatching podcast 🎙️ Hosted by Sean Bean and featuring Mya-Rose Craig 🐦‍⬛ Join our members club, The Flock, for exclusive content 🗓️ New episode every other Thursd...

Better than Sean Bean?
www.youtube.com/@GetBirdingUK

They'll only stop being very clear to be absolutely clear.
bsky.app/profile/nisa...

Sonny Chiba is The Bodyguard (1976) YouTube video by Don Surfzombie

Hegseth quoting Jules in Pulp Fiction, who was quoting, in turn, an English-language release (1976) of a 1973 Sonny Chiba martial arts film:
youtu.be/iUT_-nM1610?...

Anti-gender movement - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ge...

Why didn't you leave the dogs at the kennel?

To hum them so they're distinguishable, you'd need to be bionic, more than the man you are!

Here's some 'just war' theory for y'all:

'The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman.' - Theodore Roosevelt: The Winning of the West, 1894.

'The savage wars of peace' - Rudyard Kipling: The White Man's Burden, 1899.

Singular only? As in 'a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character'. Or plural too as in this line of Silvius's in 'As you like it': 'This is a Letter of your owne deuice. No, I protest, I know not the contents, Phebe did write it.'?

It's no. 1 in the Sunday Times 'general paperbacks' list. The sales count reported for it is smaller than for the book at the bottom of the 'fiction paperbacks' list.
archive.ph/F3spQ