Look who visited me on Ukrainian Christmas morning! I didn't have any miraculous visitations from swallows home early from the south (as in the famous Shchedryk carol), but amidst the snowflakes & clouds of ash-berries a fluffy little waxwing came... He wandered about the grass at the front, as if he was looking for something, and then sat in the tree for awhile, eating berries (but luckily not the point of inebriation). He was rather mellow & let me get quite close to take photos. He then flew away to the next-door tree, making his little kee-kee! sounds.
Bohemian waxwings are one of my favourite sorts of birds, so I shall take this as a good omen.
I saw cedar waxwings in Drumheller this summer, swooping over that very green pond in front of the Tyrrell museum. They were dark and sleek, and their colours were so bright that it seemed as if they'd just had a fresh coat of paint.
I used to think that bohemian waxwings came from Bohemia, but no... I believe they were named by rather conservative bird-watchers who thought their bright splashes of colour looked rather 'bohemian' in a Prague-or-Paris art-cafe mustache-wearing absinthe-drinking outlandish-dressing late 19th-century hippie sort of way. Sillys.
5 comments:
19th century hippie?
ooh! i like this photo. do you know why? because i like... birds! and because this one is the same plumpness as the bunches of berries. hmmm. have you seen the bird animation on the main page of the new zed website? it's fancy.
yes. in the 1860s, not just the 1960s! the online etymology dictionary says there's a citing of 'bohemian' in 1862 that defines one as being 'simply an artist or littérateur who, consciously or unconsciously, secedes from conventionality in life and in art.' which i think is much like a hippie....
thank you, b. stu... i do like birds too ;) no, i haven't seen the zed-bird... i haven't visited the site in a bit... i should wander there now.
please post more pohems! they're very nutritious.
Post a Comment