pixie selfie

Not content with just having an 'interesting fact' section in this blog - Pixie has decided to take over the photos as well and has started with a Pixie selfie.

She has persuaded (don't ask me how) some of the others to do the same - so this is a Beezle selfie (see his philosophical quote later in the piece)

 a Harry selfie ...............

 a Trude selfie ..................

she couldn't persuade Pocket (quarter Bengal) because he said he'd just laid an egg and was tired.

 and come on Pixie - you don't think I'd honestly believe this rose took a selfie?(This rose by the way is called For your eyes only and is completely beautiful - it opens up like a gorgeous peony.)

Pixie is claiming copyright on the photos though.

Her interesting fact is:

King Penguins can contract their pupils into a square.

So Quigley the quizzical rook has left my head for the skies. As you can see he was getting a bit attached - not good if you are hoping they'll go back to the wild. He had taken to flying onto my arm where he was still demanding to be fed - then hopping with graceful agility onto my head. One day he just sat on my shoulder and wrapped his wings around my neck. The day after this picture was taken and a few minutes after I'd popped into the poly intending to feed him (then remembering I'd left a pie in the oven) - he found a hole and flew away. I wish I'd seen him do it -  his flying was getting really good. I'd loved to have seen him air borne. But perhaps like it's said, that some people wait for you to leave the room before they die, he waited for me not to be there before he went.

I miss him of course - but rooks are sociable animals and I'm pleased his rookery was only a stone's throw from the poly. Later I heard a plaintive Aarkk! Aaarkk! and the maternal instinct kicked in. I looked up to where the sound was coming from - expecting to see Quigley sitting on top of the grain feeder - only to find about fifteen young rooks all with their mouths open. Word must have got round. 

 I'm always thinking the rook flying overhead is Quigley and may well do an emergency landing back on my head - but of course I have no means of knowing which one he could be. Thankfully though, he has transitioned and reached for the skies.

As Beezle and Socrates would say " Man must rise above the Earth - to the top of the atmosphere and beyond - for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives."

 The corvids are such intelligent birds and I can't bear it when I hear that people shoot them or catch them in their odious Larsen traps to attract more corvids that can be put to death.

 Henry Ward Beecher - the nineteenth century American clergyman and wit said:
"If men had wings and black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows."

This is so true - I think Quigley was more intelligent than a lot of people I've met from the nearby town.

So as this appears to be a mainly photo blog post we are putting up two pictures by Mark Ormerod, a recent guest at the Pink Tower who has taken a series of truly beautiful pictures of the wild life around us. He's obviously done some deal with Pixie and I'm pleased she hasn't claimed copyright.

Thank you Mark.

And, Pixie says that the Atchaeopteryx is the first bird - incase you didn't know.

I think that's two interesting facts, Pixie.

The Archaeopteryx's Song by Edwin Morgan

I am only half out of this rock of scales. 
What good is armour when you want to fly? 
My tail is like a stony pedestal 
and not a rudder. If I sit back on it 
I sniff winds, clouds, rains, fogs where 
I'd be, where I'd be flying, be flying high. 
Dinosaurs are spicks and 
all I see when I look back 
is tardy turdy bonehead swamps 
whose scruples are dumb tons. 
Damnable plates and plaques 
can't even keep out ticks. 
They think when they make the ground thunder 
as they lumber for a horn-lock or a rut 
that someone is afraid, that everyone is afraid, 
but no one is afraid. The lords of creation 
are in my mate's next egg's next egg's next egg, 
stegosaur. It's feathers I need, more feathers 
for the life to come. And these iron teeth 
I want away, and a smooth beak
to cut the air. And these claws 
on my wings, what use are they 
except to drag me down, do you imagine 
I am ever going to crawl again? 
When I first left that crag 
and flapped low and heavy over the ravine 
I saw past present and future 
like a dying tyrannosaur 
and skimmed it with a hiss. 
I will teach my sons and daughters to live 
on mist and fire and fly to the stars.