Showing 185 posts tagged with "birds"
Welcome to the Camera-Critters meme. We hope that everyone enjoys this meme which is all about photos of animals/critters. So make your post, link back to here, visit other Camera-Critters captures, and have fun! Each month a Camera-Critters capture will be randomly selected to be featured in the sidebar of this blog for the month.
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We try not to complicate CC with many rules, but we do ask that you please use a CC badge or link back to Camera-Critters in some way. Thank you.
Hi everyone, it's Tammy, Misty went home for vacation. She auto-published and it seems that McLinky isn't working right. I'm going to try and fix it, if not please leave your url in the comment section. Thanks, Tammy.
I fixed McLinky, so now you can just sign in. Everyone who left their url in the comment section previously, I will sign them in. Thanks, Tammy
HUGE THANKS TO ALL OF THE CAMERA-CRITTERS PARTICIPANTS FOR MAKING CC SUCH A SUCCESSFUL MEME.
We try not to complicate CC with many rules, but we do ask that you please use a CC badge or link back to Camera-Critters in some way. Thank you.
Hi everyone, it's Tammy, Misty went home for vacation. She auto-published and it seems that McLinky isn't working right. I'm going to try and fix it, if not please leave your url in the comment section. Thanks, Tammy.
I fixed McLinky, so now you can just sign in. Everyone who left their url in the comment section previously, I will sign them in. Thanks, Tammy
As she later elaborates, "Predator worship is an odd thing, but perhaps not so odd for a woman. I am aware that I am more prey than predator."
That dialectic--woman as prey and predator--spirals through Lift, a book that is intensely erotic in the original sense, being about passion, desire, and union with the Beloved, even when the beloved is a bird.
Anyone who has worked with animals (and O'Connor is an experienced bird trainer, author of A Parrot for Life: Raising and Training the Perfect Parrot Companion, not to mention an "Avalon Career Romance" called Falcon's Return) know how intimate the relationship can be. He loves me, he loves me not.
So it's no surprise that her relationship with her first peregrine falcon, Anakin, partakes of First Love, right down to the candlelight dinner of the first duck that the peregrine has brought down. At that point in her life, she admits, her relationship with Anakin "is the only honest relationship." When frustrated, she catches herself "berating the bird like a lover."
Yet with falconry, there is a bond, but no possession. Battles of wills, development of trust, relationship-building--all of that--but still a falcon does not need the falconer. As O'Connor tries to tell herself when Anakin has disappeared while hunting, "The falcon and I will both be fine on our own."
(You have said that about human lovers, right?)
Thus the book's narrative twists like a mallard dodging a falcon three feet above the water, human relationships intertwined with bird relationships, hunting trips cut by bitter memories and sweet ones.
A lot of the back story of Lift involves things that were done--or threatened--to the author in her younger days, which add poignancy to her struggle to become--in some areas--the predator, confronted with the mysteries of death and blood.
"Maybe I was wrong. Given the choice I would be the predator. Maybe I'm a hunter after all."
Whether you have felt that bond with an animal or not, by reading Lift, you might learn, in the author's words, "a way of thinking, a means of experiencing life." Not just falconers, but all true hunters, share O'Connor's experience of having touched "nature's senseless violence, clung her stray miracles [and had them] alter our beliefs."
(Rebecca O'Connor blogs at Operation Delta Duck.)
Downtown Montreal from Mount Royal's belvedere.
It's snowing here in the Wet Mountains, a wet, soaking snow that is melting in. This would be a good "desk day," especially as I am only partway through sorting out everything on my desk--the ten days' worth of mail, the receipts and notes, etc. from the conference, the new books for reading and/or review.
One review must be completed today, or I will hate myself.
But I am fidgety. M. and I spent parts of six days on trains, four days in Montreal, one day in Chicago, an afternoon in Albany, and an evening in Schenectady. It was wearing.
(Note: we rode six different Amtrak trains, and all were on time. Someone is doing something right. If you have a layover at Schenectady, refuel at Katie O'Byrne's, hang out on Jay Street.)
On the Adirondack, traveling through upstate New York along Lake Champlain, I would see some little dirt road winding off into the swampy woods, and I wanted to be off the train and walking along it with one of the dogs.
The birds are in hiding too. All that I have seen this morning are one robin and one Steller's jay--a pity, since it is Day 1 of one of our Project Feeder Watch counts. (We are not the only ones happy that PFW has started up again.) Yesterday we saw nine American goldfinches at once.
Other miscellaneous travel observations from the big world:
Traveling east from Colorado, I notice black.
A century ago, two factors favored black clothing in the city:
- Lots of coal soot in the air
- A lack of washing machines
Now it is just about attitude. I am refined and/or serious, don't mess with me. Not asceticism. Urban grime might be an issue, but it cannot be the issue.
In Montreal, where sports team-themed clothing was not as common downtown as in Chicago (although it exists), black seemed almost mandatory.
I probably stood out for wearing one of about four khaki trench coats that I spotted.
Downtown Chicago is noisier than Montreal. For one thing, it has the elevated trains. For another, there always seems to be large construction projects underway, whereas I saw none in Montreal, just street repairs.
People walk faster in Chicago too. But my candidate for a fast-walking city, believe it or not, is Dublin, based on earlier visits there.
(c) Misty DawnS
Welcome to the Camera-Critters meme. We hope that everyone enjoys this meme which is all about photos of animals/critters. So make your post, link back to here, visit other Camera-Critters captures, and have fun! Each month a Camera-Critters capture will be randomly selected to be featured in the sidebar of this blog for the month.
HUGE THANKS TO ALL OF THE CAMERA-CRITTERS PARTICIPANTS FOR MAKING CC SUCH A SUCCESSFUL MEME.
We try not to complicate CC with many rules, but we do ask that you please use a CC badge or link back to Camera-Critters in some way. Thank you.
HUGE THANKS TO ALL OF THE CAMERA-CRITTERS PARTICIPANTS FOR MAKING CC SUCH A SUCCESSFUL MEME.
We try not to complicate CC with many rules, but we do ask that you please use a CC badge or link back to Camera-Critters in some way. Thank you.
