Noise

Noise was driving him crazy. Let's see now, let me count the ways the noise annoys me.

Start with the inside. The refrigerator noise. Like a jet taking off in the kitchen fifty times a day. The radio. The television. Music, the tapes and records. The damn VCR. The electric shaver. The roaring gurgle of the toilet. The water coming out of the faucets. The pump. The pump was bad. The freezer. The fan. The computer's sickening hum and its chirping alarm. The clock by the bed. Tick. Tick. The energy-conserving automatic switch at 5:00pm. The flies knocking against the ceiling. The birds smashed into their own reflections in the windows. The wind. No, the wind was an outside noise. Mice in the walls. Sounded like a western town, Mice-in-the-Walls, Montana. OK that was it for the inside.

...And the birds. Do not forget the birds he told himself. The loud, repetitive bird shrills and burrs. Twittering buzzing over and over. The crickets, cicadas, cicadas with the terrible droning. ...

Beyond these maddening noises that wouldn't let him concentrate on anything, on anything at all, there was the wind. The wind up here never quit, shook the house. And the rain, the rain against the windows, on the roof. Then hail and snow and thunder. At night the howling of cats and coyotes.

Quotation from: Postcards by E. Annie Proulx

Variable Birds

Oystercatchers are quite common along the quieter beaches of the Otago Peninsula. They are not often seen on the St Claire beach - too many people!

But here are a small group. Notice the larger one is completely black, and the smaller ones are pied. I'm tempted to therefore say the larger is a Variable Oystercatcher, and the smaller ones South Island Pied Oystercatcher.

But of course, nothing is simple and Variable Oystercatchers can come in variable plumage phases, black, pied and intermediate. Though all nesting birds in Otago are black. So clearly there is one breeding individual in the group!

At any event they are fairly skittish and don't let me approach any closer. Curiously, they often fly over and past our house. Following the Leith River between the tidal mud-flats at Warrington, and the tidal mud-flats at Taieri Mouth via the ocean (and St Clair) I would think - they have a distinctive high pitched squeaky squealling noise.

Sun-bathing

There have been so few sunny days lately, that like me this blackbird decided to take advantage of a sheltered and sunny spot. I was reading, while he was busy, first with a good search for all those itchy buggy things...

then a bit of open-beaked panting to keep cool. Before settling for a quite sizz in the sun.

Coasting Hawk

Shivers began to run through me from head to toe. Behind closed eyes I saw my mother as she is when she appears to me, in her drab old persons clothes, her face hidden. 'Come to me!' I whispered. But she wold not. Stretching out her arms as a coasting hawk does, my mother began to ascend into the sky. Higher and higer she rose above me. She reached the layer of clouds, pierced it, soared on. With each mile she ascended she became younger. Her hair grew dark again, her skin fresh. The old clothes fell from her like dry leaves, revealing her blue dress with the feather in the button hole that she wears in my earliest memory of her, from the time when the world was young and all things were possible.

Quotation from: Age of Iron by J.M. Coetzee

Real Tree Fern

These are huge huge tree ferns. I've written before about tree ferns, but came across these just near the Allen Theatre - part of the University campus.

They are growing in a south-facing, but very sheltered environment. A small-ish bit of basement garden. You can judge the size that they've grown to, by the door and few steps up. I'm standing on another set of steps leading to a ground-floor door, and I can't get the whole tree in one shot. The building is built into a slope and was constructed about a hundred years ago. Goodness knows when these ferns were planted.

The croziers are huge too. Right up against the office window,well only about 3feet away; I'll bet the view from the desk is awesome. Here's another spot I'll have to keep my eye on.

The Nightingale Sang in Mortlake

The van-loads of heavy goods travelled safely (and in fine weather, which is a great matter) to the cottage on Saturday, where we all slept, and Will and I made our first appearance at Mortlake Church on Sunday. We felt like “jolly squatters” yesterday, but shall be shaken into some shape by the end of a week. Poor Carry compared herself to an overboiled chicken when she woke after the fatigues of the first day’s move.

I was awoke at three o’clock on Sunday morning by a concert of a very unusual kind to my ears, and, tempted by the unwonted strains, I stole down into the garden. Day was grayly dawning in the north-east, and some light clouds floating across a pearly sky. The nightingales were sending forth interrupted capricious carols from every bush ; with a higher treble for unknown warblers, and a lower one for thrushes and blackbirds. The distant curlew kept up a running tenor accompaniment, and the more distant rookery gave out a steady bass ; with the occasional addition of the wood-pigeon’s plaintive coo-oo. Then came the echo of the cheery crow of a distant cock, the lowing of the steer, and the drowsy hum of the humble-bee. The air was fragrant with newly opening azaleas and whitethorn, and I was tempted to the brink of the little lake by the strange gambols and gyrations of the great black-backed carp. At half-past four I returned again to bed and slept till half-past nine, in comfortable instinctive unconsciousness that the whole was a reality and no early morning dream!’

Quotation from: Owen, Rev. Richard, The Life of Richard Owen by His Grandson. London: Murray, 1894. vol 1 p.384

The Vague and Unwilling Boat

There was an offshore breeze and the waves slapped the boat bottom as he sped at them. A sharp turn and he felt the boat skid. Pushed the throttle back. The stern wave roared up behind him and sloshed over the transom, swirled round his ankles and spread out in the boat. He pulled at the throttle again and the leapt forward, but sluggishly, and the water on the floor rushed toward the stern, adding its weight to Quoyle's. He looked for something to bail out the water; nothing. Turned very carefully toward the dock. The boat was vague and unwilling, for the water had altered the trim. Yet he moved forward, not afraid of sinking, only two hundred feet from the dock.

Quotation from: The Shipping News by Annie Proulx.