Entertainment For Lively Minds
You don't see that every day...
Posted by Patrick Crowther on 10 June 2011 - 6:53pm.
This morning I was drinking my customary double espresso in the garden of one of Oxford's coffee emporiums when I saw something wonderful. A magpie descended from the skies, perched on the edge of a metal rubbish bin, stuck its beak into an unfinished packet of cheese and onion crisps and flew off with its gob full of said savory snack. Fair made my day, it did.
Any of you lot witnessed something unusual recently?
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Magpies...
That reminds me. My daughter asked me the other day why magpies collect shiny things. I couldn't think why - I've never questioned it.
I blathered on about impressing a potential mate, or marking territory, but does anyone actually know?
Unusual things: we have a couple of fledgling thrushes in our garden at present, they are pretty much ground-dwelling and almost flightless. The other day my cat walked past one of the little fellows, stopped, gave it a casual bat with her paw, and then kept strolling. She could have killed it easily - it was like she was just telling it off for sitting on her path. Weird.
Seagull Fantasy
Not recently, but a few years ago when I was working for the D.S.S, a member of the public informed me that a seagull had swooped down and grabbed his giro from his hand. Could he have a replacement giro he asked........
That's uncanny -
I had a similar experience many years ago with my chemistry homework. I wonder if it could have been the same bird?
A Flock Of Seagulls
and UB40, together at last!
Not in quite such a neat time frame
but the other evening I had a slightly surprising encounter with a Seal at the End of the Pier.
I could make a third link as on the other side of said pier is a Marina (though I don't think HMS Diamond was in Portsmouth Harbour at the time and there's only one of it). Slightly surprising? It was at the near end of my local pier in about 6 ft of water.
At the other end of Hampshire the local paper for Fleet must have fun with local stories about foxes ...
Bloody feathered bastards...
The seagulls in St Ives in Cornwall are a genuine menace (although our irresponsibility with regards feeding them is partly to blame for this). A few years ago I'd just bought an ice cream when a damn gull swooped down and plucked it right out of my hand and flew off with it. I hadn't even had a single lick!
On a more serious note, I saw several gulls attack a couple of teenage girls later the same day. They'd just bought a box of chips and were pecked until they dropped them and left them to the birds.
I had a similar experience
After I cycled over a bump in the road coming back from the shop, which caused a broken eggs-basket incident.
I was not relishing scraping dried egg out of the thing, but a kindly blackbird came by and scoffed the lot.
Cannibalism
in the bird world. Didn't realise this extended to songbirds.
Many of the bushland parks around Brisbane
have hoards of rogue kookaburras and goannas (big monitor lizards). I've several times lost the sausage out of my sandwich on route to my mouth, plucked out by a dive-bombing kookaburra. It was very impressive the first time.
And there are few more depressing culinary sights than seeing that your food bag has sprouted a reptilian tail after you've just spent ages getting the BBQ fire to light.
Dive-Bombing Kookaburra...
Allow me a small... TMFTL.
(That's my monthly quota used up.)
last Sunday
Honest Man and I were out for a drive and saw a Kestrel doing that lovely hovering thing, over a small roundabout on the A47, but it was really low so we saw it very clearly. Beautiful.
And later on a large hare decided to lope down the road in front of us - my, those things are BIG and can go fast! And it had such fantastic ears!
Two creatures one doesn't see close to very often.
I don't know if I've told this story before
I grew up in an idyllic residential surburb with big gardens and some of the original hilly forest land preserved as small "parks" in between the built up areas, so plenty of wildlife to be seen.
Foxes, badgers and hares, to name a few.
And my close encounter with one of those hares was spectacular!
On a lovely summer evening I was riding my bike home from a friends house, no traffic on the roads. But after a while I started hearing soft noises behind me, getting closer and closer.
A rythmical patter of soft feet was catching up with my rather relaxed speed on the bike.
I turned my head and saw an enormous hare jumping along behind me, next to the curb of the road, and as he caught up with me he swerved a little to go around my bike.
I looked at him and the moment when he was exactly next to me he turned his head and looked at me!
We looked at eachother for a few seconds in a friendly "Good evening!" kind of moment that I will never forget.
Then he increased his speed to overtake me, once again turning to get next to the curb like a good driver should. I followed him as close as I could without spooking him and looked on with a big grin as the hare made a perfect turn in the next crossing, continuing along the street where I lived towards the forest park at the end of it, just above my own garden. He jumped up the steps of the stairs leading up from the street to the first level of the hill and was gone.
I was left in a very good mood, exhilarated by this lovely and unexpected encounter.
Civilization meets the wild, and the wild is a better driver. Who would have thought ?
1. A puffed up, screaming frog.
In my house. Under the wardrobe. At 2.30am.
2. A dropped-kick cat. Out of my house. Through the front door. At 2.35am