The Real Twitter



Spring has come to Britain at last!  It is April, when:

smale fowles maken melodye,

according to the poet Chaucer.  It's a time when birds fight for their territories, find their mates, build their nests and lay their eggs.  Outside my house, the favourite visitors are starlings, magpies, crows, pigeons and blue tits.  I'm sure we will see new young ones in the course of time.

While working on my Angelio books, I have turned up a lot of interesting research regarding birds.  I thought I would share some of it with you here.  Here are 10 interesting facts:

1.  A common trick for a pet goldfinch was to draw up a tiny gold bucket on a chain to get its drink of water.
2.  "Whistling bullfinches" could be taught to sing a selection of folk tunes.
3.  Castrati were taught to imitate birdsong in their vocal performances.
4.  In Sufism, the language of the birds is a mystical language of angels.  (See The Conference of the Birds by 12th century Persian poet Farid-al Din Attar).
5.  In medieval France, the "language of the birds" was a secret language used by troubadours.
6.  The male song thrush has a repertoire of over 100 phrases, which he can repeat.
7.  In Greek mythology, crows were originally white, but were turned black as a punishment for betraying him by the god Apollo.
7.  By tradition, the nightingale sings with a thorn pressed to its breast.
8.  The mistle thrush was said to speak 7 languages.
9.  Many people tried to catalogue birdsong as musical notation.
10.  The school for musically gifted children in Vienna was known as the Cage of Nightingales.

What interesting bird facts do you know?


Location: Clayton Clayton

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In Praise of Hairy Women

Image
Who doesn't love Lettie Lutz, the Bearded Lady character in The Greatest Showman, who sings   the iconic anthem, This is Me ? Yesterday, my daughter took me to a singalong version of the film for a Mother's Day treat, and we both belted out This is Me at the tops of our voices. Both Lettie and the song have become symbols for anyone who feels marginalised or different. It so happens that last week I watched another film about a hairy woman, the very beautiful Norwegian coming-of-age film,   Løvekvinnen , or The Lion Woman, based on a book by   Erik Fosnes Hanson.   It tells the story of Eva Arctander, who is born in a small town in the early 20th century and struggles to find her place in the world. Especially, it concerns her relationship with her stationmaster father, widowed at her birth. I loved this film - which I watched on Netflix - and I definitely want to see it again. One of my best reads of last year was Orphans of the Carnival by Carol Birch, based
Read more

A Day with the BBC

Image
"I write asexual fairytales" - BBC How often does an opportunity like this come up? "The BBC are running a special week on Bradford, across all media. Send us your stories." My home town. On the BBC. And it coincides perfectly with my crowdfunding campaign for Asexual Fairy Tales . I can't send the email fast enough! Which is how it happens that - on an unusually springlike morning - a shiny, black vehicle containing camera equipment turns up on my street of small, back-to-back houses, with an operator and a reporter, ready to start filming. I have warned Louise from BBC News how small my house is, and have been assured the camera will be a small one. Obviously, she meant small by BBC standards. Still, the cameraman is unfazed by the fact that one camera and stand fills up practically all the available floor space. We squash in, just as we always do with friends and relatives. And, as it's a nice day, we film some stuff on the front step, and in the
Read more

Beauty and the Beast: King of the Wood

Image
She asked for a rose.  Her father reaches out to pluck one.  Suddenly, a Beast appears, furious, accusing him of theft.  The penalty is death.  Or the surrender of his daughter. But why such a harsh penalty for plucking a rose?  Much has been said - or invented - on the possible meaning of the rose.  When the last petal falls, the Beast's fate is sealed eternally.  It is the first thing he has learned to love.  It symbolises virginity; the plucking of the rose mirrors the deflowering of the daughter; the aristocratic Beast is excercising his  droit du seigneur  over Beauty, the merchant's child. But why should the plucking of a flower carry such a heavy penalty?  And why does the same motif occur in other fairy tales?  For example, Rapunzel , in which the father must sacrifice his child as payment for picking herbs from the Witch's garden. One answer may lie in ancient mythology.  Most ancient polytheistic religions have sacred groves, where it is forbidden to break the bra
Read more