miscellaneous small pleasures and treasures

[asakiyume]

On my walk this morning I was thinking how on a walk some days ago, I'd found a robin eggshell. I looked down and found a cardinal eggshell. Further along on the walk I found a luna moth wing: it was a morning for sweet finds.



In the evening, as the sun was setting and streetlamps were lighting up, a cardinal came and perched on one. From newly hatched to adult in one day.

Later in the evening, when it was quite dark, I went to pick some cilantro, and the first firefly of the season was in the cilantro patch, lighting up the underside of the cilantro leaves--and he paid my hand a visit, too.

Earlier in the day, some kids were playing soccer on the common, and one of them was wearing a Brazilian flag as a cloak. I had only my cell phone to take a picture with, but:


Viva Brasil!

I guess we know who he's rooting for in the World Cup!

I am writing a little something with bridges in it, and almost every day I walk along a bridge, and as I walk, I think about bridge folktales--mainly bridge battles: the three billy goats and the troll, Robin Hood and Little John, Benke and Yoshitsune. Can you think of any more bridge battles in folktales or legend?


Benke meets Yoshitsune on Gojô Bridge, by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (Source)

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that about American versus European blackbirds--though I knew European blackbirds were famous for their song, which makes sense if they're thrushes (since thrushes have nice songs… well, robins not so much, but other thrushes). I did know that American robins were thrushes, but had wondered what European robins were. They're so tiny!

Now I want to find out more about icterids….*checks*

Huh! So bobolinks and meadowlarks are also icterids! They have slightly heavy beaks, it seems to me. Much heavier than flycatcher beaks. The oropendola bird is an icterid with an amazing call. (http://sounds.bl.uk/Environment/Listen-to-Nature/022M-LISTNAT00299-0001V0) (And I can hear similarities, actually, with bobolinks, so let's hear it for family resemblance.)