Birders' Nest

[Elgarian Redux]

Such a lot of fascinating stuff here to mull over before replying.

While I am mulling, I'll attach a photo taken yesterday, up where the curlews cry. There was a notable absence of winged creatures once more, but then suddenly two small fluttery things flew up out of the long grass, and away, finally perching on a distant dead tree. Goldfinches? That was the best bet, but based only on a suspected flash of yellow. The tree was a long way off, but they seemed to be staying still. I thought the photo would show merely two blurry little blobs of coloured fluff, but I was luckier than that.

Kaleidosauruses.

[Elgarian Redux]

Yes, that boundary is very interesting, and you, sir, are very clever, because of course I'm tempted to say the viewer! That was well played, and if I had a hat, I would doff it to you! 
I am glad you like them and thank you, many times over, for your kind words.

What you're getting is just my response as it happens. I'd be glad to be kind if it were necessary, but as it is it's just an honest response to magnificent photographs of fabulous birds.

Could I talk a bit more about that fuzzy boundary? Some years ago I had some lengthy conversations with an artist, Briony Clarke, who'd devised a thing she called a Seafax. She had a sensor attached to a buoy floating far out in the Atlantic Ocean, which bobbed up and down with the waves, and transmitted a signal recording this motion, via satellite, to Briony's Seafax. This Seafax was a tank full of water with a paddle, the paddle being driven by the received signal. She put sheets of paper into the water, sprinkled some black oily ink into the water, and then let it happen, inviting the ocean to make art.

The resulting images knocked me sideways. I don't think she'll mind if I post two of them here, because I'm extracting them from an article I wrote about her work. There are mysterious step-like features ('stairways to heaven' she once called them), and vortices - strange black holes that seem bottomless. I never saw one of these images that wasn't beautiful. Art from the ocean.

'But is it art?'

Briony thought it was. I think it is too. I don't know what the ocean thinks about it.

[Elgarian Redux]

For you, two birds, one Old World and one New World. First, this Little Owl:

Oh gosh. He is peeping!

And second, this Broad-billed Hummingbird, taken on a college campus next to a parking garage:

Bedazzling! The colours!

[Elgarian Redux]

What a lovely post and what interesting and thoughtful feelings and questions! But first, I have to clear something up... most of my shots are quick, because birds are quick! And I do not get many of the shots I attempt; I have loads of pics of vegetation that a split second before had a bird in it. The birds (and most things) are faster than I am. I have little engagement with most of my targets; sometimes, though, a creature before me is willing to stay a little while and allow observation.

Yes I see that. When you're photographing the bird, all your attention must be on that. Philosophising about whether you're engaged in art would seem to be a good way to ensure you don't get the shot!

You asked: Are you outside looking in? Are you an unnatural interloper in a strange land? Or are you a part of all this? - a creature in your own right, seeking engagement with your fellow creatures?

All of these.

I think I expected that answer. I think it would be inevitable. 

When I was a girl, I wanted to live alone in the woods I frequented and loved so much, so, as you did, I wanted to be part of, belong to, that great nature¹. In early adulthood, as life got busy with other things, the woods seemed far away. When I became a parent, to the woods I went again, with the child, but we were visitors, not part of them. We looked, observed, shared, and then went home.

This seems very familiar to me.

Now, in a place very familiar to me -- the boardwalks I have mentioned, for example, where I have walked many times the past few summers so have learned where the swallows like to perch en masse and where the kingbird's nest is, what time of day is best for the possibility of seeing a mink, what path through the water the muskrat takes -- I often feel part of all of it, even as I observe. All the creatures I see are also observing.

Yes of course! I hadn't thought of that. You are all observing.

Double-crested Cormorant watching Canada Geese flying overhead

'Where's my camera?' wailed the cormorant.

But I also go to new places, where I am definitely the outsider looking in, the "unnatural interloper in a strange land", as you put it. I don't know the creatures -- some I've never heard of until I see them and they are identified for me -- nor the land. I want to make their acquaintance!

And as you become familiar with these new places, presumably you become less and less of an interloper?

It seems to me very natural that one who has "local landscapes, so ancient and in many ways remote" should over time feel part of that landscape and see it as 'my territory', because you do inhabit it. You have the familiar, you notice the absence of something that is no longer there. A sense of belonging, of being in the right place...

It sort of crept up on us unawares as our acquaintance grew, and there came a day when we suddenly noticed it and talked about it. 'Hey, we are in this big story!'

[Iota]

What you're getting is just my response as it happens. I'd be glad to be kind if it were necessary, but as it is it's just an honest response to magnificent photographs of fabulous birds.

Could I talk a bit more about that fuzzy boundary? Some years ago I had some lengthy conversations with an artist, Briony Clarke, who'd devised a thing she called a Seafax. She had a sensor attached to a buoy floating far out in the Atlantic Ocean, which bobbed up and down with the waves, and transmitted a signal recording this motion, via satellite, to Briony's Seafax. This Seafax was a tank full of water with a paddle, the paddle being driven by the received signal. She put sheets of paper into the water, sprinkled some black oily ink into the water, and then let it happen, inviting the ocean to make art.

The resulting images knocked me sideways. I don't think she'll mind if I post two of them here, because I'm extracting them from an article I wrote about her work. There are mysterious step-like features ('stairways to heaven' she once called them), and vortices - strange black holes that seem bottomless. I never saw one of these images that wasn't beautiful. Art from the ocean.

 

'But is it art?'

Briony thought it was. I think it is too. I don't know what the ocean thinks about it.

Those are indeed very beautiful!

[Elgarian Redux]

Those are indeed very beautiful!

Really pleased you like them. They're so unaccountably unfathomable. I find I stare into them feeling that I should find some sort of meaning, but they are inscrutable.

[Iota]

Really pleased you like them. They're so unaccountably unfathomable. I find I stare into them feeling that I should find some sort of meaning, but they are inscrutable.

I'd find them beautiful anyway, but my appreciation for them was enhanced by their back-story. The idea of the ocean 'dictating' the art like the human unconscious, was very appealing to me.

[Elgarian Redux]

I'd find them beautiful anyway, but my appreciation for them was enhanced by their back-story. The idea of the ocean 'dictating' the art like the human unconscious, was very appealing to me.

I believe the artist would be delighted with that response. She saw her role as a kind of facilitator for the 'creativity' of the ocean, and wanted to eliminate her own selectivity as far as possible. The idea evolved a good deal, year on year: her first Seafax was a black perspex box with a long roll of paper. She left it on the sand in the path of the incoming tide, and when the sea reached it, the upwash of the waves drove a paddle that gradually unrolled the paper into the water chamber. I can't remember how she got the ink in there - I think she did it manually with a dropper.

The result was called a 'Sea Scroll'. They were fabulous - I have one hanging on the door behind me as I write this. One of my treasures.

[Elgarian Redux]

We were listening to Elgar's cello concerto today, and as always I find myself thinking about Elgar's favourite cellist Beatrice Harrison, who famously played her cello to the accompaniment of nightingales singing in her garden:
Beatrice Harrison with nightingales

I think I'm persuaded that the nightingales were responding to her music, though I can't hear any significant correlation between their song and what Beatrice is playing. Can anyone?

However, I have noticed that if I play sing and play guitar in the garden, the birds do seem to respond. Again, there's no musical correlation that I can hear, but they do 'join in'. For all I know their songs might effectively mean 'Oh shut up will you?'

We used to get cows in the field at the bottom of the garden, and they were guaranteed to come and peer over the hedge if I started playing. My wife captured one such moment - see below. What on earth was all that about? I never knew. But see how attentive they were! Best audience I ever had.

[owlice]

Loving the discussion and photos (WOW) in the odd moments from the siege I can peer in; will be back when the siege is less siege-y.

[Elgarian Redux]

Loving the discussion and photos (WOW) in the odd moments from the siege I can peer in; will be back when the siege is less siege-y.

When I read this my imagination became full of ballistas, broken battlements, and splintering drawbridges. I presume your actual seige is a gentler one?

[Iota]

Strange I keep trying to post a much longer reply than this, but keep being told it's a Forbidden Error. Will try again later.

[Elgarian Redux]

Strange I keep trying to post a much longer reply than this, but keep being told it's a Forbidden Error. Will try again later.

A similar thing happened to me yesterday. An hour later it was OK.

Meanwhile we await the pleasure of your observations!

[Iota]

A similar thing happened to me yesterday. An hour later it was OK.

Meanwhile we await the pleasure of your observations!

Haha, it's more like you're temporarily granted the pleasure of their absence. Will try again though.

[Iota]

The result was called a 'Sea Scroll'.

Haha, apart from anything else she's quite a dab hand at amusing puns as names for her devices.

We were listening to Elgar's cello concerto today, and as always I find myself thinking about Elgar's favourite cellist Beatrice Harrison, who famously played her cello to the accompaniment of nightingales singing in her garden:
Beatrice Harrison with nightingales

I think I'm persuaded that the nightingales were responding to her music, though I can't hear any significant correlation between their song and what Beatrice is playing. Can anyone?

However, I have noticed that if I play sing and play guitar in the garden, the birds do seem to respond. Again, there's no musical correlation that I can hear, but they do 'join in'. For all I know their songs might effectively mean 'Oh shut up will you?'

We used to get cows in the field at the bottom of the garden, and they were guaranteed to come and peer over the hedge if I started playing. My wife captured one such moment - see below. What on earth was all that about? I never knew. But see how attentive they were! Best audience I ever had.

Hahaha, that's absolutely hilarious, what a great photo! They really do look utterly bewitched by your playing! Clearly cows with good taste!

(Strangely appropriately for this forum, that photo also seems to have echoes of the cliche about VW's music of 'cows looking over a gate' too .. perhaps by design?)

I don't hear any connection in the Beatrice Harrison clip, but it does seem a rather serene little duet between the species.

(If anybody's interested I just removed an emoji and the post was no longer Forbidden.)

[Elgarian Redux]

Hahaha, that's absolutely hilarious, what a great photo! They really do look utterly bewitched by your playing! Clearly cows with good taste!

(Strangely appropriately for this forum, that photo also seems to have echoes of the cliche about VW's music of 'cows looking over a gate' too .. perhaps by design?)

Design would be nice, but it was pure fluke. My wife was watching from the kitchen window, grabbed her phone [did you see one of Owlice's eyebrows lift, just then?], and there it was, captured forever. The story would be better if the cows starting mooing in harmony with the song, but they didn't, sadly.

I don't hear any connection in the Beatrice Harrison clip, but it does seem a rather serene little duet between the species.

Has anyone done a study of the musical quality of bird song? Is it actually musical in any meaningful sense, or is it just 'sounds'? If I think of that delightful descending trill of the willow warbler, I hear it as a lovely liquid sound, and I could even describe it as 'musical' - but I think that would be metaphorical rather than factual.

(If anybody's interested I just removed an emoji and the post was no longer Forbidden.)

I wonder if it means that emojis are now regarded as evil by the board software?

[Papy Oli]

We used to get cows in the field at the bottom of the garden, and they were guaranteed to come and peer over the hedge if I started playing. My wife captured one such moment - see below. What on earth was all that about? I never knew. But see how attentive they were! Best audience I ever had.

Did they request Atom Heart Mother? 

[Iota]

Design would be nice, but it was pure fluke. My wife was watching from the kitchen window, grabbed her phone [did you see one of Owlice's eyebrows lift, just then?], and there it was, captured forever.

Nonetheless, a striking image!

I wonder if anyone has done a study of the musical quality of bird song? Is it actually musical in any meaningful sense, or is it just 'sounds'? If I think of that delightful descending trill of the willow warbler, I hear it as a lovely liquid sound, and I could even describe it as 'musical' - but I think that would be metaphorical rather than factual.

I imagine Messiaen would have been an intriguing person to pose that question to. I must say I generally love what he does with bird song in his music, but I know it's not for everybody.

I wonder if it means that emojis are now regarded as evil by the board software?

Well the software has certainly deemed them verboten for me tonight.

[Elgarian Redux]

Did they request Atom Heart Mother? 

They wanted to know if there'd be a reissue, and if so, could they pose for the new cover?

[Elgarian Redux]

I imagine Messiaen would have been an intriguing person to pose that question to. I must say I generally love what he does with bird song in his music, but I know it's not for everybody.

I'm one of the people it isn't for, I'm sorry to say - so I probably wouldn't understand his reply. But I was wondering about Wagner's Woodbird in Siegfried, where the music does call to mind some of the characteristics of birdsong. But then it is clearly music, and the actual birdsong that inspired it isn't, I think. The question is beyond me, really.