Holiday tips
On holiday in Suffolk? Lovely! Don't forget to look out if you're in the Beccles area, where on this day every year three ratcatchers playing musical instruments are supposed to reappear from the maw of hell. One for the album.
August 31, 2010
July 28, 2010
The World's Weirdest Necklace?
I know the Victorians loved their odd decorations - from hair brooches to beetle-wing tea cosies, but I think this necklace made of humming bird heads might be really going too far:
July 3, 2010
If you've noticed a bit less linking around here lately, it's because I'm now doing a lot of that stuff on Twitter, so you should really follow me there.
If you're not on Twitter - don't be scared, it's a friendly and useful thing once you get going.
April 30, 2010
Dancing statues
For bank holiday weekend fun, why not head over to the village of Burrough Green in Cambridgeshire, where, according to the Paranormal Database, on this night every year the two statues that stand above the door of the school come alive and dance on the village green. Should definitely be worth seeing.
April 24, 2010
Deckchair Day
Inspired by the recent enforced quiet in Britain caused by the volcanic ash, I have come up with a suggestion. One day a year when the whole world switches off its phone and lounges quietly in a deckchair at home. No planes, no cars, no DIY. Lazy people manage this quite well already, but their fun is always spoilt by busy types, banging or sawing or travelling about even when they don't have to.
Allowable noise: birdsong, children playing (within reason), tea-sipping, page-rustling, bees buzzing (no wasps), cork-popping, chuckling at a remembered joke. No loud snoring, keyboard-tapping or annoying conversation - preferably no speech at all, apart from a whispered 'thank you' if someone hands you a piece of cake.
We'll all be better for it, I promise. I suggest July 12, the birthday of Henry David Thoreau, a master of peaceful living. Let the preparations begin!
March 21, 2010
Germinal
Say what you like about the French Revolution, they knew how to invent a calendar. Today is Primevère, or Primrose, the first day of Germinal. I look forward to Hen, Bee and Lettuce.
(Picture from The Flowers of Milton by Jane Giraud in the NYPL.)
March 5, 2010
This Profession Is Not Crowded
Popular Science has put its 137-year archive online (found via BibliOdyssey), which means hours of harmless fun searching for old pictures of space travel for us all. This February 1920 edition features some very of-their-time issues:
But what I'm really fascinated by, among all the cures for bow-leggedness and stammers, are the many ads for money-making schemes, which have some excellent career suggestions:
You can also find Big Profits in Vulcanizing, and Get Bigger Pay through Electricity. Most promising of all is The Police Key, which "opens almost everything". "Every householder should have one", they innocently suggest.
February 1, 2010
Let Cake Month Begin
According to the Venerable Bede, February, or Solmonath, was the "month of cakes" for the Anglo-Saxons, when they offered cake to their gods.
Some people seem to translate it as Mud Month or something to do with sprouting cabbages but we won't worry about that.
So, off we go - a month of cakes, starting now. Why not start by baking this Betty Crocker Colorvision cake from the Fifties, above, which seems to be made of spam.
January 5, 2010
Women's Christmas
January. Back to work, sleet and snow, Christmas trees are rotting on the kerb. It's miserable - but this is because, in the UK at least, the festivals are so badly managed. Everything happens in autumn, then you're left with nothing but a few pancakes to look forward to between now and Easter. Unless you really enjoy giving things up for Lent.
The answer is simple: create more. Or rather, because creating things from scratch is hard work and for mugs, dig up some obscure forgotten ones or steal them from elsewhere.
I suggest we start with tomorrow, which is apparently known in parts of Ireland as Women's Christmas. Women have parties or go out to celebrate with their sisters, aunts etc, while men stay at home and do all the housework. And children give their female relatives presents. Ideal! Let the celebrations begin.
December 6, 2009
Ask Fed by Birds
I can't help noticing that the search terms that lead people to this blog are often in the form of questions. We hate to disappoint, so here are some of those questions answered.
1. Why birds stare at humans?
Because they do things like this:
2. How do marshes get fed?
Like this:
3. How to achieve best wardrobe?
Make everything bigger:
4. Who fed the birds on saturday nite?
He did (is that an egg?):
4. Knit new inoaktive?
I'm not familiar with an inoaktive: if, as I imagine, it's something like this, then please don't make any more:
And for the person who just wanted "fashion sternly":
November 7, 2009
The Story So Far...
Fed by Birds is three today! Please don't get too rowdy in your celebrations: think of our neighbours.
For the benefit of new readers, here is a summary of the plot to date:
The sinister truth about bird geniuses and the secret life of priests was revealed.
Long sleeves posed a deadly threat, but the English spirit won through.
Seemingly hopeless quests were resolved.
We were haunted by the sounds of wolves, Cornwall and
Brighton Pier.
Times were hard, but we learnt to forage for luxury, divine the future and automate the creative process.
Plus, we met the Gwolphs of Saturn, listened to the ravings of a robot and finally got our speedle.
Now, read on...
November 3, 2009
Recipes for Dreaming
Dreaming = free and fun. Done correctly, it can fill those apparently useless sleeping hours with adventure. For the benefit of mankind, we have tested the following notorious dream-causing foods, to see which has the most spectacular results:
1. Cheese
This is probably the most famously dream-inducing food in popular myth. To test this thoroughly, we ate a large amount of Gorgonzola pizza shortly before bedtime.
Result: Tedious dreams which are mostly administrative - having a lot of visitors turn up without enough beds, people whose invitations I haven't replied to, packing suitcases for a plane that's about to leave, etc.
Conclusion: Quantity, but not quality.
2. Chocolate
Eating chocolate before bed seems to be widely associated with having bad dreams.
Sounds like a myth invented by unscrupulous, tooth-protecting parents. Sceptical, the subject ingested a combination of "double chocolate" mousse, hot chocolate, and a few truffles to be on the safe side.
Result: Surprisingly, that parental threat turns out to be completely true. An almost text-book nightmare follows: a figure suddenly sits up in the next bed, in the style of Whistle and I'll Come to You, and says, "I am The Undertaker." It's all downhill from there.
Conclusion: Listen to your mother.
3. Chilli
Spicy food is often blamed for vivid dreams. We ate at a Sichuan restaurant, where all the food is exceptionally fiery.
Result: A cascade of dreams. I am at a banquet wearing a gaberdine mac which I realise will infuriate the king. I am being chased so turn into a bird, and fly over a pub where I overhear the owners discussing the secret recipe for their special burgers (they use coconut). My fortune is made! And so on.
On the minus side, my fellow guinea pig complains that he's spent the whole night fighting imaginary gatecrashers at a student party.
Conclusion: Impressive, but may require a lie-in afterwards.
4. Lobster
There's a reason why the surrealists loved lobsters: they and other shellfish have long been thought to cause wild dreams.
A recent trip to the French seaside gave us the opportunity to test this out.
Result: A night packed with entertainment and strangeness. Robots made of blue-and-white patterned porcelain; people playing boules on a dark river with candles in paper boats; using a saw like this:
Conclusion: Deluxe dreaming. Highly recommended.
October 13, 2009
La Séduction
Back from the Cote Basque, where one shop has found the ultimate window display for enticing the ladies inside: a little black dress, covered with macarons.
September 11, 2009
Sir Osbert's Chicken
Hooray, the V&A have put more of their collections online, including objects that are in store, and it's hard to know where to start, there's so much good stuff. I like their theatre costumes, like the wolf from the Royal Ballet's Sleeping Beauty above, "devised by the great mask-maker Rostislav Doboujinsky".
They include some designs by famous names, such as David Hockney, for The Nightingale at the Royal Opera House, and Gerald Scarfe, for Orpheus in the Underworld at the ENO:
I don't know who I feel more sorry for, the dancer who had to wear this 1959 costume on the left, or the member of the Royal Ballet forced to dance in Sir Osbert Lancaster's chicken costume in 1960:
Exploring throws up some strange comparisons - for instance, there's a surprising similiarity between a Gilbert and Sullivan Queen of the Fairies and Maggie Smith's costume as Lady Bracknell on the right:
September 6, 2009
Shipwrecks and Sea Monsters
Norfolk on the east coast of England is a mysterious place, for those who don't know it, of mudflats and eerie marshland, so it's not surprising that the Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service online collections throw up all sorts of weird flotsam, among the usual seaside jollity:
There are pictures of unexpected catches being marvelled at, such as this shark in Sheringham in 1913 (the back of the postcard apparently says "Dear F, just a card to show you the latest production of this enlightened hamlet; please note by cross, future Prime Minister and coming Amateur Billiard and Golf Champion standing in his characteristic attitude with hands in pocket, write later, CR")
There are men rescued from a shipwreck being given tea by kind Cromer ladies in the Bath House Hotel:
Strangely spooky scenes from the British Gut Factory in Kings Lynn:
A large number of glaring stuffed birds:
and page after page of the most frightening dolls I've ever seen:
But the best is this 1786 sketch of a sighting of a (Cornish) sea monster by Charles Catton: "first discover'd by two boys at day break. / from top of the Head - to the end of its tail 48ft 10ins - the thickest part of the body":
July 27, 2009
One Hundred Years Hence
We should be travelling around with our personal hot-air balloons and amphibian bicycles by now, according to these futuristic 1900 trade cards. Also going on underwater trams:
and finding new uses for Roentgen rays - not sure what they would be, apparently peeping at safecrackers:
Via Weekend Stubble.
May 25, 2009
Word of the Week: Cephalophore
A saint depicted in art carrying his own head. Perhaps the most famous is St Denis, who appears among the statues on the front of Notre Dame, above, and who walked two miles and continued preaching a sermon after his head was chopped off. But there are many others, including St Valerie of Limoges, who gave her head to the bishop who converted her.
And St Alban, who seems to get to have his head and carry it:
May 16, 2009
Current Distance from Earth: 26.78 Light Minutes
Hooray, Wolfram Alpha is now operational. Obviously the first thing you do with something like that is to put your own name in it.
And it tells me that I'm a minor planet, and even gives me my equatorial radius and solar system configuration. Google never did that.
April 19, 2009
Russian Mysteries
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii travelled all over the Russian Empire between 1909 and 1915 to create a massive collection of photographs which have a very mysterious quality about them - and the meeting of the old glass negatives and the digital colour processes used to recreate the pictures online just adds to it.
March 17, 2009
Fata Morgana in Finland
March 7, 2009
Beautiful Eyeballs
The Science Museum's online History of Medicine exhibition has as you might expect plenty of curious objects - like mole hands from Norfolk that warded off cramp:
mummified birds:
and eye-catching good-luck amulets:
What's surprising is how attractive some of the trappings of illness were - elegant bronchitis kettles:
Staffordshire feeding cups for invalids:
Backrests for the bedbound:
Smart medicine chests:
Containing all kinds of delicious-looking medicine:
Of course, anything can look appealing if it's presented in the right sort of case:
See also:
February 18, 2009
The Glass Delusion
I'm afraid I've forgotten who pointed me towards this, but it's fascinating: an article on a delusion that as far as I know has now disappeared - that the sufferer is made of glass.
"Possibly the first case of a man believing his whole body to be made of glass was the French king, Charles IV, who allegedly refused to allow people to touch him, and wore reinforced clothing to protect himself."
One poor man was supposedly cured of his obsession by a severe thrashing from the doctor.
Glass figures from the British Museum
February 16, 2009
Spectres and Phantoms
Looking at Vernon Hill's extraordinary calendar for 1910, I can't help noticing that February is a pretty bad month. I don't know what "the hateful Fill-Dyke" is exactly, but it sounds awful [update: looks like he took it from an old rhyme]:
At least it's not November, which looks even worse:
February 7, 2009
Brownie advice
I'd forgotten until reading Boynton reminisicing about gaining her Tree Badge, about all the essential wisdom that I picked up by being a Brownie (Pixie division). Not so much on the badge front - Art and Pet Keeping - but it did teach you how to dance round a papier maché toadstool with insouciance - a highly transferable skill - and most importantly, what to keep in your pockets. Forget all that paraphernalia you're lugging around with you - this, we were told, is all you need to get you out of any situation:
Clean hankie (to be used as a tourniquet if necessary);
Piece of string (to capture animals, tie shelters together etc);
Safety pin (for wardrobe malfunctions);
Pencil and paper;
10p for a phone call (adjust for inflation).
Presumably you'd want to add a machete in jungle terrain, but this wasn't mentioned.
In the absence of regular pocket inspections I'd let this go a bit but we'd all be better off in these testing times if we remembered our Brownie training. Although thinking about it I must have built up a frightening backlog of Good Deed for the Days which I'm not sure I'll ever be able to get through.
February 2, 2009
Working from Home
Londoners aren't going anywhere today, being basically unused to this sort of thing.
But walking around, it's good to see everyone is putting their time to good use:
Even this blog's IT department (who is far too busy to do any IT these days) managed to find a window in his schedule:
January 2, 2009
Resolutions! Or Not!
If you're still struggling to decide on your goals for the New Year, Neuronarrative gives us the reassuring example of the influential psychologist William James, who was notoriously indecisive, and spent 15 years trying to choose a career, switching from science to painting, back to science, natural history, medicine etc.
His diary for the end of 1905 has a familiar look to some of us:
'October 26: "Resign!"
October 28: "Resign!!!"
November 4: "Resign?"
November 7: "Resign!"
November 8: "Don't resign"
November 9: "Resign!"
November 16: "Don't resign!"
November 23: "Resign"
December 7: "Don't resign"
December 9: "Teach here next year".'
December 10, 2008
Poetry Update
It's easy to fall behind with modern poetry. Apparently, Flarf is dead. Didn't know it was alive? Keep up, please. It's all lemur poetry now.
December 4, 2008
Healthy Old Man of the Month
These days, it's heartening to see a change in the google searches that end up at Fed by Birds. Once search phrases ranged from the baffling to the frankly horrifying, but now they are generally for much more appealing things, including, last month, "lovely monkey" and "healthy old man". I think lovely monkeys are already well represented here, but what could be more cheering than a picture of a really healthy old man? So much so that I think I'll make it a regular feature.
We start with Jack Beers, whose amazing life was the subject of a documentary called Holes in my Shoes. Jack was once famous as New York's Strongest Boy, and hasn't lost it: YouTube features a clip of him tearing a phone book in half at the age of 94. He's now 98, and seems to have joined a band.
November 24, 2008
Wrong, wrong, wrong
Everyone with a blog seems to be going crazy for the Typealyzer, where you put in the website address and it tells you what personality the author has.
Fed by Birds, it claims, is written by type ESTP - The Doer: "The active and playful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities. The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time."
This couldn't be more wrong. There's absolutely no joking or action-filled work around here, and remaining inactive for long periods of time is not a problem.
Even more confusingly, when I ask it about my other site, it tells me I'm writing in Chinese (Simplified).
November 14, 2008
Meet the Gwolphs of Saturn
This 1946 advertisement for Casco was illustrated by the Russian-born surrealist Boris Artzybasheff. I'm not completely sure what Casco was/is, but they promise "new and unusual contributions to better living", and they certainly knew how to commission an eye-catching advert. Artzybasheff also illustrated this "improved design for modern man":
I can't find a big enough image to read the writing, unfortunately, but it's good to see Improved Man has a built-in filing cabinet, birdcage and some kind of early iPhone, with detachable heart and champagne glasses. I like the look of him a lot. And Improved Woman has a twig and is that a newt? - plus rear view mirror, martini, and I think it says that trapdoor in her head is for easy access by a psychoanalyst. Bring on the future!
September 25, 2008
Microscopic Writing
The online Small Worlds exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science features this microscopic writing machine, created by banker William Peters in 1862: "The machine was occasionally brought out at Microscopical Society soirées to write the Lord's Prayer and to draw geometrically."
They also liked to write tiny, boasting letters - "I trust you will agree with me that there are other small things to be seen in London besides Tom Thumb":
September 9, 2008
Back from the Baltic...
And I'd like to suggest the introduction of the strandkorb into British beach life: a reclinable wicker sofa to shelter you from the wind is just what our seaside needs. No more shivering in holes dug in the sand, or flailing around with windbreaks: you can drink your gin and tonic and contemplate the horizon in perfect comfort. Why didn't we think of that?
Looks like someone is trying to get the ball rolling but at two grand each it might be a while before they replace the deckchair, unfortunately.
August 25, 2008
How We Got Our Speedle
There's something a bit familiar about the mix of items in Lewis Carroll's scrapbook, put online in its entirety by the Library of Congress. It includes advertisements he found funny, cartoons, pictures of seahorses and weird fish, cuttings of stories about mysterious animal footprints. Yes, this is essentially Lewis Carroll's blog and completely fascinating:
He seems to have been intrigued by a story about threatening letters:
And kept a clipping recording his own 'outing':
There are cuttings of his own journalism, such as an article about Feeding the Mind and - my favourite - a little story about how a family acquired its Speedle ("There is one drawback. It is blue and there are no straps.")
July 25, 2008
Unexpected Balaclava
Endless fun and time-wasting to be had at Wordle, where you can generate word clouds from your blog or any other bit of text. It throws up all kinds of useful phrases: different versions of the one above produced "oldthink", "giants disappointment", "modern invisibility" and "ears-free living", the last two of which sound like surefire magazine titles to me. Also, "Even addicts started tiny", which sounds like a really sad version of a Herzog film.
Via Hooting Yard, whose word clouds are predictably intriguing.
July 24, 2008
Invisible Shed
After waking up from a dream that I'd found a tiny cottage I had somehow overlooked in our garden, and discovering to my disappointment that it wasn't true, I started thinking about houses you could conceivably not notice. Maybe a living tree house, as above, or a dwelling strung high up out of sight:
But I think this reflective shed is what I'd choose for true invisibility:
July 7, 2008
Time's Up
Does time's arrow go down, up or sideways for you? Interesting observations here about how the arrow of time goes in different directions for different occupations. For physicists, writing diagrams starting at the bottom of the board, it always goes up; for computer scientists, it goes down as they work down the screen; for Western writers it goes left to right. Bloggers, I can't help thinking, are caught in some strange hybrid world, in which time goes up as new posts pile on top of old, and yet also left to right and down. I'm going to lie down now.
July 6, 2008
Chicago Sky
Chicago, on admittedly just one brief visit, seemed to me a much more strange and interesting city than it's given credit for. Resident Tony Fitzpatrick obviously finds it so, creating a private mythology out of pieces of local ephemera, incorporated into drawn collages. Via Moon River.
June 22, 2008
Glow Mushrooms
A surprising number of fungi are bioluminescent: that is, glow in the dark - contributing to a phenomenon known as foxfire, from Japanese legends about fox spirits in the woods. You can see why these might seriously freak you out on a lonely journey home - I wonder how many ghosts/fairies/aliens were actually mushrooms? Spooklights seem to be a popular sighting in America: reminds me of the legends of will-o-the-wisp in England, which I think were actually due to marsh gases, and who lured travellers either into a quagmire or to buried treasure, depending on how lucky they were.
May 30, 2008
Your Search is Over
Regular visitors will know that here at Fed by Birds we hate anyone to go away disappointed. So for the person who arrived on a Google search for "moustache man", I don't think you can do better than this:
The searcher for "nun holding a baby" - is this close enough?
For the person looking for "the difference between fashion and poaching" - they are easily confused. Here is someone doing just that:
Whoever was searching for "things to do in when it's raining" - a spot of fancy dress always passes the time. Here are some ideas:
The person after "birds that are blue" - how blue do you want them?:
But why not branch out from blueness with a Fischer's Turaco:
or a violet-breasted roller bird:
And the person who was searching simply for "properly complicated" - why not have a think about this for a while:
May 29, 2008
The Campaign For Drawing
I don't know about you but I've got sadly out of the habit of drawing much. Even doodling's not so easy when you're sitting at a computer. The Campaign for Drawing was launched in 2000 by the Guild of St George, a charity founded by John Ruskin, to try to get everyone sketching. They say, "The Campaign's work will finish when the words 'I can't draw' are dropped from common usage." Their main event, the Big Draw, is in October, but you don't need to wait that long: another group have declared June 7 international Drawing Day. If you need some inspiration, can I suggest the wonderful Ghost School, where artist Wil Freeborn posts his sketches of everything that's going on around him:
April 20, 2008
Glamorous Mosses
February 26, 2008
Fun in England
Anyone about to visit England for the first time will be glad to find that we still like to spend our weekends in much the same way as in these photographs from the English Heritage site:
Sleeping it off
Visiting miniature villages
Sailing tiny boats
Queueing up to stare at a wet dog
Searching through cardboard boxes
and angry donkey riding
There's a lot of this sort of thing as well:
February 19, 2008
We Love Ronald Searle
Whether he's advertising hotels:
socks:
cigarettes:
a holiday in the Black Forest:
Or just generally looking around:
He had a great look, too:
All these and more can be found at the Ronald Searle Tribute Blog.
February 11, 2008
Mystery Island of the Month: Brownsea
Brownsea Island in its present incarnation couldn't be more of a haven for innocent English jollity, being a National Trust nature reserve, scout camp, sometime holiday home for John Lewis employees, and written about by Enid Blyton. The reason it was known for years as Mystery Island, despite being close to a very popular and prosperous bit of Dorset, is due to the efforts of the 'Demon of Brownsea', Mary Bonham Christie, a recluse who drove the inhabitants from the island and let it turn into wilderness for 30 years. She refused to allow even her own family to land without permission, and kept gamekeepers constantly roaming to keep the curious locals out (although the more daring ones still managed to sneak ashore now and again).
The peculiar Mrs Bonham Christie is thought to haunt the castle since her death in 1961, and was supposedly captured in a photograph here.
December 7, 2007
Your Search is Over
As ever, we hate to disappoint, and I can't help noticing from the list of search terms for this site that some people must be going away unfulfilled. So for the person who wanted 'The most beautiful bird in the world', here you are:
or no, perhaps:
or:
It's too hard to say.
Whoever was looking for 'humans without eyes', I don't like the sound of that much. But here are some eyes without humans:
The person trying to find out 'how to peacock hair' - I imagine it would involve something like this:
And whoever came looking for 'what colour knickers' - I'm taking that as a request for advice, rather than a strangely vague search for facts - I suggest red, as in Haiti red underwear is thought to keep away ghosts.
Now I hope we're all happy.
November 8, 2007
Venice Biennale
I've just made a visit to the Biennale in its final days, and this is definitely the time to go, when the crowds are gone and you can skip quickly past the more boring stuff (Germany). I recommend speeding things up by making straight for the Korean pavilion to see the cartoon skeletons and magnifying suit of Lee Hyungkoo. Go to the Belgian pavilion for Eric Duyckaerts' glass labyrinth (mind how you go there), the Russian for The Last Riot, a film by AES + F, and the Canadian pavilion for David Altmejd's mad, glass-splintered, squirrel-infested giant.
The best pavilions are those scattered through the city in grand palazzos - Mexico's has both an splendid setting and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's beautiful installation which transforms visitors' heartbeats into flickering lightbulbs.
The Arsenale has an endless stream of war-themed photographs, video art etc, which becomes almost immediately oppressive, but also some highlights such as Angelo Filomeno's beautiful embroideries (shown above), and El-Anatsui of Ghana's delicate wall hangings made of wire and foil and bottletops:
and Christine Hill of Volksboutique lightens things up with Minutes, an installation of steamer trunks containing the detailed trappings of different work personas.
You also get to see Venice with hardly any people in it.
September 14, 2007
Romney Marsh - Land of the Strange
Just back from a trip to Romney Marsh in Kent. It's near London but another world - the tip of it, Dungeness, is best known as the site of Derek Jarman's garden but is home to a whole isolated community of fisherman's shacks, makeshift homes and a tiny, sinister chapel, living on a shingle penisula with the hum of the nuclear power station. It's made even weirder by the fact that you get there on a miniature but fully working steam train, which takes you through the marshes past a lot of caravans and some 1920s sound mirrors out on to the shingle.
Romney Marsh is also used by the army for firing practice, so you come across one street built in the middle of deserted countryside. Malaria wiped out a large proportion of the population in the 19th century, particularly the women - hence the huge churches now serving tiny villages.
August 11, 2007
Inside the Large Hadron Collider
It's always interesting to have a snoop round someone else's workplace, particularly when that place is the CERN Large Hadron Collider or the European Space Agency. The ambient sound adds to the realism of Peter McCready's 360-degree photographs, and you can zoom in on the details - at the ESA, where they seem to be watching Saturn's rings on a monitor, you can look up to read a sort of departure board of launches, but also discover that they have nasty carpet tiles and that someone seems to have been violently kicking one of the bins. At CERN, you are confronted by the mind-boggling machinery of the world's largest particle accelerator, but if you twirl round it's all stepladders, discarded cups of coffee and someone's bike. (The staff have to use to bikes to get around it, because the collider is 16 miles long.)
July 16, 2007
Pomona Britannica
The NYPL Digital Gallery has this 'collection of the most esteemed fruits at present cultivated' in Britain from 1812 by George Brookshaw. They certainly had a better choice of esteemed fruits in those days - sixteen varieties of gooseberry:
Hoboy, chili and Scarlet-flesh pine strawberries:
The peachiest peaches, from the Black Peach of Montreal to La Teton de Venus and Violette Hative:
Cloth of Gold, White gage and Blue gages along with the green:
and the weirdest apples, from Norfolk Paradise to Spitsburgh Pippins to Kirk's Scarlet Admirable and Sullenworth Rennet:
Bring back Bigg's Nonsuch! That's what I say.
July 8, 2007
Thomas Bewick
I am related to this 18th-century wood engraver and naturalist, although exactly how I cannot say. He had some familiar preoccupations:
Birds, stags and monkey cooks - some of my favourite things. And a puffin, which I am keen on, having seen some floating about off Skye recently. They are unexpectedly tiny in real life.
I was glad to discover that there is a statue to my illustrious ancestor in Newcastle:
although its setting is a little surprising:
July 7, 2007
Diatomite Railway
The Fed by Birds summer excursion has taken place with great success, to the isle of Skye. Highly recommended is a walk along the remains of the tiny Lealt Valley railway, which used to take diatomite - made of these:
from Loch Cuithir down an impressive waterfall gorge to the shore, where it was processed to be made into face powder and dynamite. Don't worry if it's raining: the weather changes about every five minutes, and the rain clouds make the green mountains behind loom up delightfully. If you haven't got a car, the 57 bus on the main road will take you on a magical mystery tour all the way round the peninsula (anti-clockwise). An added bonus: on Skye it doesn't get properly dark at this time of year - it just goes blue:
July 3, 2007
The Morton-Wimhurst Holtz Influence Machine Never Disappoints
I have no idea what holtz influencing is. Or what these other mysterious contraptions do. But I want the one that Sparks every day Rain or Shine.
June 9, 2007
Your Search is Over
Here at Fed by Birds we hate to disappoint, so for the person who got here by searching for 'man with a lemur in st james park london' - will this do?
or perhaps this:
For the seeker of 'hat with vulture', here you go:
And as for 'turbans are bad for the bird' - is this why?
But whoever was searching for 'vulture eating a budgie bird pictures', I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere.
April 17, 2007
We Also Love Jim Woodring
Who is not even dead. And has a blog where you can monitor the progress of his amazing pop-up sketchbooks.