Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

It seems that every time I look out my window, I see fairies floating over Lombard Street. So either there's a huge dandelion infestation somewhere upwind (west) of here, or some local species of tree produces tiny, tufted seeds that I'm mistaking for dandelion fairies.

Inside my house, I frequently see strands or tuft's of Perrine's fur floatingby, blown about by electric fans and the occasional fragment of a breeze that deigns to come in through my windows. I wonder -- if I knot a little loose fur into a shape like this, would that constitute a feline fairy?

And if we stretch the relationships between different sorts of felines beyond reason ... ah, poetically ... and there are any skin flakes clinging to the hairs, can I call it a "dander de lion" instead of "dent de lion"?

(I've been having my mind wander over words a lot lately -- not long ago I spent a while musing about the distinction between 'purplish' and 'purple-y', and more recently I couldn't decide whether an adjective meaning "reminiscent of, or tasting faintly of jalapeño" should be pronounced "ha-la-pee-nish" or "ha-la-peh-nyish". (The jalapeñish pickles that inspired that train of thought are quite tasty.) And on my way home last night I started wondering whether expressions containing the word 'druthers' had spread to dialects that pronounce "I'd rather" with an a-sound instead of a schwa. (A helpful poster on a.u.e pointed out that 'druthers' has had about a hundred and forty years to spread to other dialiects...))

In the meantime, I've been continuing to shoot birds for practice, though I'm still having trouble with the swifts (the birds most likely to be any help in learning to shoot bats). I've noticed that birds are much more active some days than other days, and the swifts in particular spend most of their time at different altitudes on different days. The first few days of this week, they were about three times higher up (except when on their way to nesting sites) than yesterday or any time in the previous two weeks. An obvious guess would be that they're going where the insects are, but that just raises another question ...

Larger birds, such as the one shown here, are easier, but even they are difficult to keep in the viewfinder when they fly close enough to see a lot of detail. (I'm mostly using 400/5.6 and 100-300/4 lenses.)

I don't think I'll be bat-ready by Pennsic. But I'll certainly try for a bat photo there regardless, as usual. Anyhow, as a result of paying more attention to them lately, I've been noticing that birds make me smile.

I've also been noticing birds using ground effect -- sparrows using it to slip down the sidewalk a quarter to half a block well under a wing-length off the ground without beating at all, and other birds using it to 'skip' off my 2nd-storey roof. I'd never paid enough attention to catch that before. I don't remember seeing the parakeets I grew up with doing it, but I can't tell you whether that's because I didn't know to look for it, or because parakeets don't do it, or merely that there wasn't enough room in the house for them to make use of it.

Some other recent uploads: