Click here to enjoy some of the finalists in the Bird Photo of the Year contest. Especially note the fine photo of a Common Kingfisher beaking into the water. This blowing little blue demon is found over much of Europe and beyond. Less than Half the size of our Belted Kingfisher but a giant compared to Malachite and other miniature kingfishers in the tropics.
SPEAKING OF KINGFISHERS…
One of the most entertaining bird books I’ve read lately is As Kingfishers Catch Fire. Put together by a British writer and British artists the book traces some European species through literature. Some are species we know well: collared-dove, raven, peregrine, starling. Others are close cousins to American species like crow and kingfisher. Then there are some European species we can envy: Nightingale, Skylark, European Goldfinch.
Naturally most of the authors quoted herein are from the British isles: Heaney, Dylan and Edward Thomas, Hardy, Chaucer, Shelley, Wordsworth, Yeats, D.H. Lawrence. But there are plenty of Yanks as well: T. S. Eliot, Mary Oliver, Raymond Carver, Wallace Stevens. When its raining at night and you can’t see birds, this book is a fine companion. It, too, may sing to you.
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