Sunday bird blogging

A gray catbird pauses on a bench in the Ramble.

Every time I go through a new batch of bird pictures, I wonder why I keep trying. There are brilliant photographs of birds all over the web, and mine are never more than passable.

But I do love the challenge. Any idiot with a decent camera and access to Photoshop can take great pictures of the reflections in windows; the worst that can happen is that you miss the best light. And in that case, you can usually go back. Buildings are so beautifully sedentary.

Birds, on the other hand, are in constant motion. They sit on branches obscured by leaves, or they dig for dinner in the mulch on the ground, and they fly away the minute you get a decent angle. The trees are thick in the Ramble, so it's dark as well, but birds tend not to like it if you use a flash. In fact they display no interest in cooperating with photographers whatsoever.

I don't have a huge zoom lens like some of the photographers I run into in the park, but I don't think it would help me much. This catbird landed ten feet from where I was sitting and stayed there long enough for me to get this picture, and it's still a little blurry.

Saturday reflections

Here's a ready-made Impressionist canvas -- the appropriately murky waters in New Orleans City Park.

News of the world

I've barely been keeping up with local news recently and haven't spent much time cruising the online news reports. But here's an interesting story from Afghanistan, with yet another in a long series of unintended consequences: the government has banned ammonium nitrate fertilizer because it can be used to make explosives, perhaps not taking sufficiently into account the fact that it is also used as...fertilizer.

Nur Agha, from the village of Adazai, said, “When I was using ammonium nitrate, I was selling 420 kilograms of dried prunes a year. Last year, after the fertiliser was banned, I harvested just 70 kilograms of plums as the fruit dropped before it was ripe.”

The farmer said he now believed Afghanistan’s international allies “want us to lose our livelihoods and be forced to go to war”.

Eight out of ten Afghans are involved in agriculture or animal husbandry, but chronic underdevelopment and years of war mean the farming sector is always on the edge. Even when ammonium nitrate was allowed, growing crops was an arduous task based on manual labour, and farmers were lucky to make a subsistence living.

A local elder in Tagab who did not want to be named said the plum trees in his orchard had yellowing leaves and dropped their fruit prematurely. He compared the fertiliser ban to the outlawing of opium production – in both cases the authorities had failed to come up with a workable alternative.

“We’re fed up with orders from the government. One day, they tell us not to grow poppy as it’s harmful to their foreign friends. The next, they tell us not to use this [fertiliser], again because it harms their foreign friends,” he said. “Promises of assistance haven’t been delivered on…. I am left with an orchard that isn’t productive because there’s no ammonium nitrate since the government ban, and there is no alternative fertiliser.”

Welcome to the working week

Not really, at least in the U.S. Or, I should say, not yet.

So here's another fakeout, a street performer in Lisbon. If it's not obvious from the photo, he's floating a foot or so above the street.





The question is, how?

It's obviously the cane, which is mounted in the platform on the ground, and he's hanging from some kind of harness that connects to it. But is his left arm fake, part of the contraption, and that's why he's wearing the gloves? He doesn't look fat enough to be concealing an arm under the coat, and his face suggests that he's not a skinny man padded to look fatter than he is.

And how does he get into and out of the harness there on the street without giving away his secrets? Does he have an assistant who swoops in with a big cape to cover him up while he wriggles free? I couldn't waste my last day in Lisbon waiting for him to end the show, though I was sorely tempted to. And I've been wondering exactly how he did it ever since.

Sunday bird blogging

I planned to go to the Ramble early this morning, but I overslept and didn't get there until almost ten, when the only birds in view were the usual: starlings, grackles, robins. But I'll never qualify as a serious birder, because I like starlings and grackles and robins. I even love house sparrows, the tough little hustlers fighting off pigeons for the scraps from outdoor cafes, and most people consider that they barely count as birds.

Here's a robin, with his beak still dirty from digging for his breakfast.

Saturday reflections

I've been home for several weeks now, so it's more than time for a New York reflection.

Abstracts

Not quite abstracts, maybe, but some fun closeups from the parking lot in Piazzale Roma.

Welcome to the working week

Whatever you've got on your plate this week, it's got to be easier than doing construction in Venice.

Welcome to the working week

Preparing artichokes for sale at an outdoor market in Via Cesare Balbo, Rome.

Saturday reflections

A palazzo on the Grand Canal.

Welcome to the working week

Morning maintenance on the Grand Canal in Venice.

Sunday bird blogging

A peacock at the Huerto del Cura.

Peacocks hardly seem to count as birds at all, since their bodies are so unwieldy and earthbound (maybe that's the reason for their incessant whining.) Viewed up close, like this, you can see how absurd they are: all dressed up and really, nowhere to go and no way to get there.