Now there’s an idea I wish I’d thought of: Shoes that are foot shape(d).
Inside cover of box holding recent footwear purchase
Movement in the tangle of branches behind the feeder catches my eye: a tuft of head feathers is my first clue that something is different. The crest is almost cardinal-like, but the colour is all wrong. In lieu of binoculars, I grab my camera to get a better look. What the heck?
As the bird comes into reluctant focus, I get it: a waxwing. And, as usual, not just one but a bevy of these beauties. A small flock, forsooth.
Spinus tristis. It sounds like a sad backbone, doesn’t it? But no.
The American goldfinch (Spinus tristis) is a small North American bird in the finch family. It is migratory, ranging from mid-Alberta to North Carolina during the breeding season, and from just south of the Canada–United States border to Mexico during the winter. – Wikipedia
Some sites offer more description.
Adult males in spring and early summer are bright yellow with black forehead, black wings with white markings, and white patches both above and beneath the tail. Adult females are duller yellow beneath, olive above. Winter birds are drab, unstreaked brown, with blackish wings and two pale wingbars.
Some offer more enthusiasm.
This handsome little finch, the state bird of New Jersey, Iowa, and Washington, is welcome and common at feeders, where it takes primarily sunflower and nyjer.
Sometimes my travel photos lend themselves to a narrative. Sometimes not.
The landscapes here are from a sunny and briskly windy day spent along the north end of the Wild Atlantic Way, which we saw in part on our trip to Ireland four years ago (here and here).
The Wild Atlantic Way, 1600 miles (2600 km) in length, is one of the longest defined coastal routes in the world. It winds its way all along the Irish west coast from the Inishowen Peninsula in the north down to the picturesque town of Kinsale, County Cork, in the south.
The other shots are from a misting morning in Letterkenny, our last on this trip.
Signposts for the Wild Atlantic Way
Did the same engineers build both bridge and fence? Asking for a friend.
No sunbathers, several parkas . . .
Car-trunk reflection and waterlogged boat
The mouth of the Lough of Swilly
Lighthouse, Fanad Head
Looking up . . .
Looking up.
Today, 2022 April 22 (22/04/22) (also 22/22/22, hah) is the birthday of the late husband of an old friend. Yesterday was the Queen’s birthday and my father’s.
Last week the Big Guy and I attended a wedding celebration in Letterkenny, Ireland. Tomorrow, family members from that Irish clan will be attending a wedding somewhere in Bavaria.
I certainly mark notable endings — deaths, as the obvious example — but it is beginnings that hold a special place in my heart. New babies and birthdays. First dates and weddings. New jobs, new homes, new cities.
Today, 2022 April 21, is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s 96th birthday. This year is also the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. As of 06 February, she clocked 70 years as monarch: a first in the history of the British monarchy. And she shows no sign of quitting.
Do you know, I’ve been Queen barely 10 years,
and in that time I’ve had three Prime Ministers.
All of them ambitious men. Clever men. Brilliant men.
Not one has lasted the course.
They’ve either been too old, too ill or too weak.
A confederacy of elected quitters.
– Queen Elizabeth, The Crown, in a scene set in 1962
Today, 2022 April 21, would have been my father’s 100th birthday. I turn 70 in a few weeks, so this year is also his Platinum Jubilee of being my dad, if you like. He shows no sign of quitting either.
What with an international flight, jet lag, a head cold, and a wedding, this past week has not been good for blogging.
Here, instead, are some scenes of Ireland that give an idea of its charms over-and-above green rolling hills. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Poisoned Glen, Co. Donegal
Gap of Mamore
Malin Head, northernmost point in Ireland
Letterkenny streets and the ubiquitous whin
Inch Wildfowl Reserve
New friends
As a mission statement, it’s admirably clear.
The Humor Research Lab (aka HuRL) at the University of Colorado Boulder
is dedicated to the scientific study of humor,
its antecedents,
and its consequences.
How does HuRL do it?
The lab’s theoretical and methodological base
is in the interdisciplinary fields
of emotion and judgment and decision making,
with an emphasis in social and cognitive psychology.
Good news: To understand the Lab’s conclusions you don’t need to get remedial training in “emotion and judgement and decision-making” or take what for most of us would be a first course in social and cognitive psychology. Instead, you can watch this 12-minute TEDxBoulder talk or you can just accept the summary of what makes some things funny in their own words: benign violations.
Spring:
The least-reliable season!
Not much of a marketing slogan, I guess, but it has the ad-vantage of capturing Spring’s peek-a-boo nature. Now, gentle zephyrs smell of new growth and the sun actually warms; now, rain sleets down from leaden skies and there is no warmth in us.
Gray infuses all.
Confused precipitation
waffles. Rain? Sleet? Snow?
Is the precipitation really confused or does it just lack the courage of its convictions? Without getting into character analysis/assassination, I’m prepared to give Spring a bit of a break here. False starts can be heartbreaking but it has never truly failed: Spring always arrives.
If you, Lord, kept a record of false starts,
Lord, who could stand?
– Psalm 130:3, paraphrased
So let’s try again.
Spring:
Down, sometimes — OK, often — but never out.
Not a good slogan, but not a bad target.
Posted: 2025 May 17
Thanks to John Whitman for this slightly dismayed face from downtown Ottawa.
This space is available for other submissions.
