"I am an animal" - Nature Notes

[goinghome]

Last year, in the eaves of the house across the road from mine, swifts like these nested behind the cross-beams out front

- ​

This year, a couple of starlings are occupying the same spot. Starlings get it on several weeks before other birds, and they are known to seek out vacant nests and use them, rather than build their own. The swifts have just returned from the Congo regions where they over-winter, and I've seen them flutter around in agitation, looking for the home they built. The starlings loudly held their ground, and since they're still in and out with worms and grubs, they have presumably prevailed. A bunch of sparrows also arrived, inspecting the same facade, and a couple of them seem to have taken over the eave space on the other side of the door. I snapped one of the starlings entering the nest, and an inspecting sparrow to the left.

On the same day I witnessed that drama, I watched two scald crows driving a neighbourhood cat away from their 'tree' in an area of partial scrub behind the house. Scald-crows look like this.

One scald-crow dive-bombed on the cat over and over, narrowly missing him by inches, while the other chased him on foot, going very close, squawking like a demon. The cat tried to walk away nonchalantly but the way he suddenly turned his head
and often looked prepared to run, betrayed his jitters.​

I was reminded of the tour-guide who showed us around the Holy Land, the time I visited Israel, admitting that war is usually about resources, so that no-one is forced to be 'the end of the family line'.

Also on the same day as that drama transpired, I chanced on this instance of exquisite existence, an Orange Tip.

For a giggle, check out anti-animal vegan Collin Moulton at the Dry Bar Comedy club, with the key sketch about 34 mins in

 

[goinghome]

The bull-fighter dies?

Bullfighting, which is considered part of Spain’s cultural heritage, is once again at the center of the debate in the Iberian country after the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, announced the cancellation of this year’s National Bullfighting Prize and that he would speed up the procedures for its definitive cancellation.

Urtasun has repeatedly expressed his opposition to the spectacle, which he considers to be based on animal cruelty, and in fact, this measure is in line with the electoral program of Sumar, the party to which the minister belongs, which proposed the abolition of the cultural and patrimonial protection of bullfighting and the abolition of its public funding...

- https://www.pressenza.com/2024/05/a...heritage-spains-bullfighting-debate-heats-up/

 

[No 27]

The bull-fighter dies?



- https://www.pressenza.com/2024/05/a...heritage-spains-bullfighting-debate-heats-up/

You're a spinster, aren't you?

 

[goinghome]

aren't you?

There I was, thrilled to notice an addition to my pet animal thread, only to find a lone predator who seems to have become consumed enough by my online persona to start sniping with conjectured identity tags on a thread about something specific and completely different. This approach is unlikely to charm anyone to disclose who, how, why they are.

I know a young man going through a fishing phase, who recently caught a large pike (before returning it alive to the water). Pike are cannibalistic bottom-feeding species, with teeth like these

Recalling the incontinence No. 27 has displayed in the past when giving offense, they must also have a mouth full of spiky gnashers. Still, in the year or two I've been back, I've seen compulsively aggressive people change and become civil, similar to the story of Angulimala. Or at least share an animal anecdote, with photos. Otherwise, beware!