Call me whatever you want, but that’s one flight we won’t be on tomorrow.

The long, narrow bar connects the folksy-chaotic gypsy street on one side of the block with the folksy-chaotic payo shopping street on the other. People walk through it from one side to the other without greeting the hick Pakistani tenant or any of his clients. Not that he cares in the least: he is off [...]

I am building a bird table so I can catch tasty little birds with a net and fry them in bechamel for breakfast. Its leg consists sturdy spring, which will cause pigeons, goats and other creatures undesirable for this purpose to fall off before they get to the bait.

Emanuel del Mar, Nuevo guía para la conversacion, en español é inglés (1839, via GBS):
Una golondrina no hace verano. One swallow does not make spring.
Both spring and summer are used in both languages, but you’d kind of expect northward migration to take swallows to Spain in spring and then England in summer. Perhaps we don’t [...]

Laura Gibbs is posting, translating and commenting Latin fables. Today’s is rather good: “The Birds were in a terrible Fright once, for fear of Gun-shot from the Beetles. And what was the Bus’ness, but the little Balls of Ordure, that the Beetles had rak’d together, the Birds took for Bullets.” Read the rest.

I’d have thought this story establishes for once and for all that chickens discovered America, but I guess there’s still a whole load of work to do.

I’m still not very good at birds, so, until I can do a vulture like this, here on the edge of some scree is a species unique to Iberia: it looks like a sparrow, has a call like a chaffinch, and the English name is spaffinch. Behind me to the right, under a small group [...]

Full points to Mr Antonio Navarro, who wanted nothing more than a peaceful beer in a brothel. (Via Absurd Diari) (I am saving my commas for a more appreciative audience.)

Snapped by SG on a lovely clear day last week on a variation of this Barcelona city walk. The birds belong to three tired-looking gents who one would have said were hippophiles pertaining to the kingdom of Dionysus, so we didn’t enquire as to the whys and wherefores.
Birds are often painted for ceremonial or magical [...]

I want to do something quite simple: change from Vodafone to Movistar or Amena-Orange so I get reception in the Pyrenees, while keeping the same phone (a stream-personalised Nokia 3310), number and pre-pay accountability. When I say this shop assistants laugh uneasily and reach under the counter for the bat, and online things are no [...]

So this will be left at that.

Re this post, this remarkable image of a falcon scattering starlings, which won Manuel Presti the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. (Via esprit azul@après moi, le deluge)

As Spain disintegrates, Pedro de Miguel suggests that even sparrows are moving into the separate identity business:
In Bilbao it’s not just the Bilbainos who are from Bilbao. If you’re not from round here then you really should look out for Bilbao sparrows: fat, glossy and prone to cockiness, they barely make way as you pass [...]

The other day I serendipited upon a review in Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië (1853) of Abraham Benjamin Cohen Stuart’s translation of what sounds like an absolutely brilliant Javanese epic poem dealing with the life and loves of one Baron Sakendher, Geschiedenis van Baron Sakendher. Een Javaansch verhaal van vertaling, [...]

There’s a bunch of mad old guys in the neighbourhood who come out and feed the pigeons, which then crap all over benches, bicycles and toddlers. One of the locals has discovered how to make them stop. He puts a handful of salt in his pocket, lies in wait till he sees them emptying their [...]

I’ve bumped into a number of Moorish poet-princes, but I’d never heard of poet-princess Wallada bint al-Mustakfi (994-1091). There’s a sensible, sourced account (in Spanish) here, and then there’s this. I had my doubts about Wijdan al shommari, and thought I’d be able to nail him/her on the basis of his/her (?) version of a [...]

I know we’re not meant to read books using CORDE, but we do, and we enjoy it muchly, so we do. Here’s a bit from Diálogo argentino de la lengua by Avelino Herrero Mayor, published first in 1954 with 50 gorgeously anachronistic dialogues teaching the art of talking and writing propane, and then again in [...]

All the birds here are, of course, flourishing, but better safe than sorry.

Margaret Marks says that the Marxist-Leninists are not giving away balloons in the German elections. I hope this is because they can’t afford them rather than for ideological reasons. While it is true that Jimmy Connolly saw in them the nemesis of the working classes, a progressive balloon vendor appears in one of my favourite [...]

Aus, ous i caca, Birds, eggs and shit. The scooter went by too fast for me to enquire further.