Sunday bird blogging

I saw this titmouse in January; the park isn't quite so brown now as spring approaches.

That seed in the beak, held so delicately, made me think of a joke my stepfather used to make about my mother—She eats like a bird, a peck at a time. I'm sure I was taught in some dreary lesson in elementary school that peck refers to a unit of measure, as well as the more common usage describing what birds do with their beaks, but I doubt that most people would even get that pun anymore. (Unless they're old enough to also remember the song my grandmother used to sing to me. I love you a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck.)

My students love idioms, and I usually start my class with one, explaining the meaning and showing how it's used. Yesterday I did a whole lesson on idioms about food: I've got bigger fish to fry, don't cry over spilled milk, not my cup of tea. It was really fun, but unexpectedly exhausting. The last half hour of the class was fairly lackluster as the students were basically struggling to stay awake.