Drake on the gate

The duck feeding season is already under way. I dunno, maybe it has something to do with the mild winter we’ve had this year: everything seems to have started early. Ducks from the nearby river spend lots of time camped out on the communal front lawns throughout the spring and summer. I read in Bruce Campbell and Donald Watson’s Oxford Book of Birds that during the breeding season mallards lose their flight feathers for a while. I am, however, dubious about this factoid, and for one good reason–I have actually seen the ducks flying.
They also enjoy, as our picture shows, balancing on rickety wooden gates and, as fashion pundits might say, ‘striking a pose’.

Oh yeah, and forget what they say on BBC Springwatch: ducks love bread. In fact, they’re absolutely quackers about it.

Go on, have another picture. This one’s expandable; careful you don’t get pecked!

Pigeon post

I’m puzzled. (Yeah, I know that’s nothing new.)

What really puzzles me though, is how I can go for years accepting something without question (e.g., cardboard milk cartons that splash your milk all over the table upon opening, incompetent Tory governments, and the seemingly ubiquitous nature of Ant and Dec) until one day, for no apparent reason, it strikes me how strange that something really is, and I am then prompted to seek an answer.

I’m sure I can’t be the only one like this.

What’s intriguing me at the moment is the world’s most boring bird. No, not Clare Balding. No, I’m talking ’bout the collared turtle dove, that dull grey beaky blob of a bird with the monotonous three-note call. Not very mysterious to look at, I’ll grant you, but I’m baffled as to how it got its Latin name: Streptopelia decaocto.

Let’s break it down into simple stages.

Strepto is a prefix, from the Greek streptos, meaning ‘twisted’. Twisted, flexible or bent. So what’s bent about the collared turtle dove? So far, I’ve found no explanations, despite looking in numerous places; even the mighty Wikipedia doesn’t address the issue, and if anyone were going to make something up, whether correct or not, you’d think a Wiki contributor would have done. But no.

Pelia, I think, is skin, or in this case feathers. What have we got so far then? Bent feathers? Surely not!

The prefixes deca and octo mean ten and eight respectively. So, in the same way that a dodecahedron has twelve faces (‘do’ plus ‘deca’, see?) I surmise that the collared turtle dove has eighteen of something. But eighteen what? Can’t be brain cells, can it? I mean, that’s seventeen too many to have composed that yawn of a ‘song’ that it has. And the number eighteen doesn’t seem to be connected to its length or wingspan as far as I know.

Neither of my birdwatcher’s field guides can offer any explanation. So, as I said, I’m puzzled. I hope this doesn’t mean I’m going to have to phone up…

Bill Oddie!

Update:
Shana did loads of online research and found this from Wild Birds Unlimited,

The scientific name, Streptopeleia decaocto, literally means a collar (streptos) dove (peleia). In Greek mythology, Decaocto was an overworked, underpaid servant girl. The gods heard her prayers for help and changed her into a dove so she could escape her misery. The dove’s call still echoes the mournful cries of her former life.

D’oh! So the first bit of the bird’s name simply means collared dove. Well, I did say my Latin was a bit incomplete, didn’t I? But what about all that Decaocto stuff?

Ornithologists who fancy themselves well versed in classical learning often cite Decaocto as a possible character in Ovid’s Metamorphoses but we have no firm evidence for that as yet and it may be it’s all wishful thinking in order to make a fairytale seem to have more history than it actually does. If anyone cares to trawl through Ovid’s book and let us know one way or the other, we’d be eternally grateful and will send you a free apple as a token of thanks.

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Wot? No wrens?

Just for the record, since April I haven’t heard even a single wren. Plenty of chaffinches and blackbirds and all the other usual birds. But no wrens. Is it just Lincoln’s South Park area or is there a shortage of wrens nationwide? I shall investigate further…

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Cinnabar moth

cinnabar moth
CC image courtesy of fras1977 on Flickr.

Despite both of us suffering from the lurgy at the moment (sore throat, muscle fatigue etc) we still managed to drag ourselves into the garden this afternoon to do a spot of weeding; the wild grasses we sowed last autumn have gone, unfortunately, a bit too wild, so we decided to thin them out in order to give everything else a chance.

Shana immediately spotted what we later found out was a cinnabar moth, nestling in a clump of dry grass. (Dry? It was virtually straw!) When it flew off a minute later, the rich, almost dazzlingly bright colour of its wings was a delight to see. Although this day-flying moth is quite common, it’s the first time we personally have seen one. Forty-odd years was, I can tell you, worth the wait, but let’s hope the next one is not so long in arriving.

House martins and swallows arrive. Spring is here.

It’s official: spring is definitely here at last. True, the sycamore across the road (and every other tree besides) being fully in leaf should have given us a clue to that effect a couple of weeks ago. But today we spotted our first house martins of the year. And when we went out back after lunch to give our garden a right royal weeding (!) our ears were assailed by the constant cheery chatter of swallows. These guys don’t just pop over for the odd day when it’s warm enough: they’re here till September. So when they turn up, that’s springtime here (nearly summer, even), and no mistake.

Shana, wielding a rechargeable strimmer somewhat in the manner of a horticultural Arnie Schwarzenegger, made short work of some unruly tussocks in the back border. The meadow patch, though, looked fine, so needed nothing doing to it.

With luck, we’ll see more butterflies than last year, which seemed a very poor year for them. In my usual anoraky style, I have my I-Spy Butterflies book and a sharpened pencil at the ready and I’ve already logged ten cabbage whites and one of those frillyterries (they’re all tortoiseshells to me, pal). I just hope Big Chief I Spy will be impressed by my hard work and observational powers; otherwise, he can stick his head-dress where the sun don’t shine (no offence meant, of course).

Wagtail inspects water pipe burst

A water pipe near one of our neighbours’ houses sprung a leak yesterday. Anglian Water engineers came along in a van, inspected it, sprayed their equivalent of a post-it note in blue paint on the pavement (’3″ cast’), and left, so presumably it isn’t urgent and can wait till after the New Year festivities and related hangovers have worn off.

Meanwhile, there’s a puddle outside which is getting larger and deeper. Shana swore she saw a shark’s fin break the surface earlier, but I remain sceptical. This little wagtail seems to like all the mud, though.

(Here’s a tip: click on the little wagtail and he will miraculously increase in size — just like the puddle!)