Tag: Birds

Fiction by Idle InkSep 3, 202212:10 pm

Last Flight of the Passerine Brigade by Rick Hollon

I had just sunk at long last into my easy chair, pipe in hand, glass of palm toddy at my side, when my door fell victim to rapid-fire tap-tap-tapping.

I fluffed and sputtered but it did no good. The tapping came again, insistent as a woodpecker. I made a severe face at my pipe. “That’ll be those squirrels again, I expect. Tut! Still fixed on the idea that their grandmother left nuts here twenty winters back.” I tamped out the pipe and set it beside the toddy as the raps rattled through the tree once more.

Fiction by Idle InkSep 4, 202111:15 am

Tesla and the Pigeon by Ryan Davies

I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them, for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird – pure white with light grey tips on her wings. She was different. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.

I was always too afraid to marry. An inventor should have a wife, they told me, but they didn’t understand that I was already married to my work. I could never be worthy enough for a woman, who were superior to me in every single way. My heroes, Isaac Newton and Immanuel Kant also never married and their genius was a testament to that. My chastity was the key to my own scientific abilities, but as I near the end of my life, I sometimes doubt if the sacrifice was worth it.

Poetry by Idle InkJun 5, 202111:53 am

Bird Calls by Connie Woodring

Tweet-atweet-atweet

chirpchew, tweettweettweet, chirp, twittertoo

sqeeeez, twittwit, cheep, atweet

chirp, aacoocoocoo, hoothoothoot, chirpchirpcheeou,

scraaaaaaaaacawcaw

Seeds, seeds, seeds

Cat, danger, cat, cat, fly away

Worms, bugs, eat, do like me

Essay by Idle InkJul 4, 202012:01 pm

The Language of Birds by Gary Glass

The hermit thrush has an ethereal flutey call. It composes its serenades in a minor Dorian mode, structured around an ascending scale that concludes with a coy come-hithering, the phrase being repeated at various rather awkwardly connected pitches. Actually, like most birds, it has a variety of calls — even the “mute” swan, which sings like a crow eating a cricket. The so-called “trumpeter” swan sounds something like a hoarse goose. Many a purple poet has assayed to paint the hermit’s song in lyric:

gone beyond all going on beyond real gone