Tag: Birds

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