11 - talitiainen

-


The talitiainen, parus major, is the great tit in English. The picture's a bit blurry, taken through glass and greatly cropped, of course. But I'm pleased with it, given that I was only using my little Canon compact camera.

It's quite well disguised, against those autumn colours, don't you think? This isn't in Finland, but I gather the colours of the British subspecies is close to that of what is found in Finland; it seems to have a slightly wider black chest stripe than the Finnish variety. The species is widespread across North West Eurasia; my old (1996) Finnish bird guide/lintuopas tells me there were - a very broad estimate! - between 600,000 and a million breeding pairs in Finland. Current Wikipedia says 2 million. More in winter. Taking those numbers with a pinch of salt, you'd still have to think it's a successful species and is flourishing. As we keep having to acknowledge, winters in Finland, certainly in the South are gradually becoming less severe.

Anyway, this wasn't Finland. At the end of November I spent a few days with cousins down in South Devon. So, on the South coast, latitude South of London. This bird feeder is situated just outside their living room window, quite close to it, hence if you walked into the room from the door to the right of this, birds on the feeder would be spooked and fly away. However, once you sat down, they'd soon return. I figured I had a good chance of taking a more identifiable picture than usual, so I sat down in an armchair I could prop my elbows on, and waited, as still as possible. In due course this bird returned, and I took these two photos. I did see a couple of other types on this occasion, I remember also a sinitiainen/blue tit, but this wasn't a birdwatching trip and I didn't hang around for any more. 


However... Just up the road, there's a little nature reserve, on the edge of the cliff, devoted to a rare species here, the cirl bunting. This isn't known in Finland, but it's related to the keltasirkku/yellowhammer, and does look a little like it. My cousin pointed one out on a previous visit, so technically, I have seen one, but to be honest I'd never have known what it was. This time around, we had a very pleasant walk up there, and as always enjoyed the gorgeous views over the Channel. No sighting of the elusive cirl bunting, but apparently we were listening to it at one point. If I ever manage to take a picture of that, it'll be one of my most proud blog posts!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blade Runner 2049's Finnish (Aug 2019 update)

-
Image
No, that isn't a spelling mistake. This really is about the Finnish in Blade Runner 2049 . There are a few spoilers in this, nothing big, but you may want to check out now. (NB - 2019 follow up comments in PS down at the bottom) I went to see the film a second time, primarily to immerse myself again in that world. Despite the intensely pessimistic vision it offers, its design and cinematography are wondrous and absorbing and I wanted it all again, while I could still get it on the big screen. And it was a big screen, a bigger and better one in Manchester. I went with a friend, which enabled some lively discussion afterwards. I'm glad to say she liked it too, and made several good points. The main one was about the 'glaring plot hole' towards the end (ie. how does so-and-so know how to find *cough* in order to effect a rescue): something's been cut out there, maybe only a bit of script, but something which might have explained it. There were other reasons t...
Read more

Harrow on the Hooghly, by John Lethbridge

-
Image
"Harrow on the Hooghly" was a nickname given to the New School of Calcutta and Darjeeling , on its founding in 1940. The Hooghly is the principal river running through Calcutta; Harrow is one of England's most prominent private schools. It was one of a number of emergency schools set up early on in the Second World War, for children of British parents in India who would otherwise have been educating them in Britain. In 1940 India would have seemed much safer than Britain; there was a real threat of invasion by Germany and, worse, the sea lanes were becoming very dangerous. Getting passage as a civilian was very difficult, and the normal route to India via the Suez Canal was impossible until after VE Day in 1945. There was an excess of refugee children in 1940, with a pressing need to be educated, who could not be accommodated in the existing European schools in India. Then  Japan went to war with Britain and the situation in India suddenly looked very threatening. If...
Read more

How To Talk Trash In Cherokee

-
Image
by Don Grooms and John Oocumma is at barely over 100 pages a basic down to earth introduction to speaking Cherokee in everyday situations. Superficially it seems to be a typical phrasebook as you might find for any language. Except that Cherokee isn't any language. Linguists would have to say it's in decline , mostly spoken by the older generation. Numerically the Cherokee would appear to be doing well, compared with other indigenous peoples, especially if you include all those who say they're part Cherokee. But they live entirely within the USA, they're extensively mixed with the general population, and few are inclined to hold on to their ancestral language. They exist as distinct communities in only two places: on the Qualla Boundary, the Cherokee reservation in the Smoky Mountains at the Western end of North Carolina; and around a couple of towns in the Eastern part of Oklahoma.  The plain fact is that any Cherokee you met would be a fluent speaker of US Englis...
Read more