Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
An attentive observer, watching a non-sleeping bird, will very rarely see a serene creature.
For most of their waking moments, most birds are obviously keenly aware of their vulnerability to predators, their opportunities as predators, and/or of how best to defend or advance their “place” within an ever-competitive hierarchy.
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Could Sir Mick and his fellow Rolling Stones really be so dangerous, still?
…and who knew that they lurked within a nature Reserve in China?
Lock up your pandas!
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On 9 June 2015 the relevant part of the glacier and snowmelt-fed riverbed was bone dry.
But when the river rages, it uproots mighty trees, carries them for a while, then dumps them
Then, over many years, the consistently shifting, ever-swelling/shrinking river transforms their “skeletons”.
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Most of the birds pictured are migratory waders, becoming airborne from a wetland in Kutch, Gujarat, western India.
If you don’t already understand how birds fly, this post will point you to some lucid explanation.
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Ugly Beauty is a composition by Thelonious Monk.
Received notions, prejudices and phobias can prevent people from seeing or hearing clearly.
Less so posthumously, but very much so during his lifetime, many just did not “get” Monk’s music – for reasons not hugely dissimilar to those which can blind people to an arachnid’s or a reptile’s beauty.
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Today’s song with words is a lovely celebration of daybreak on “the spine of England”.
Its image comes from “the roof of the world”, where even flat, “low” places are several thousand metres higher than England’s Pennine Hills.
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Today’s photo (copyright Doug Spencer) was taken at 7.41 am on 05 February 2020 in the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary, Keoladeo National Park, Rajasthan.
Its musical companion is a sublime morning raga, performed by one of the Indian subcontinent’s most eloquent instrumentalists.
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The featured image (copyright Doug Spencer) shows produce being sold on the footpath in the “old city” quarter of Jaipur, Rajasthan, on 07 February 2020.
This post has two very different songs.
Neither is new, but each is fresh.
Both vividly remember the calls of actual produce sellers, but the second song is really about something that money cannot buy.
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On this winter’s day in Rajasthan these demoiselle cranes had it easy.
The altitude was low, the weather mild, and they only had to fly for a few minutes – from a local dam to a nearby village, where food is provided expressly for them – then, back to the dam.
To reach this cranes’ paradise, however, they had to cross the world’s mightiest mountains…and as winter becomes spring they will have to fly over the Himalayas again.
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Around half of the 200+ known chameleon species live only in one country.
Madagascar is home to both the biggest and smallest chameleons.
Much of what most people believe about chameleons is pure fiction…or rather less than half-truth.
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