Oven Bird.

As turkey day approaches in the United States, here is a different kind of oven bird.  At Meliora Latent Julia has posted a video of the nest it builds.  It’s called los horneros and one of them, rufous hornero, the red oven bird, is the national bird of Argentina.  Horneros, according to Wikipedia, are known for building mud nests that resemble old wood-fired ovens (the Spanish word “hornero” comes from horno, meaning “oven”).  I think the nests are extraordinary, how do they know how to build them?  Look at the tiny curved entry to the nest in Julia’s video, it’s like a door that’s half ajar: it probably stops the wind and rain from getting in, and being the same colour as the nest the birds can peek outside without being observed.   As you will also see from Julia’s post the oven bird is keen on expressionism.

Animals From All Over.

While my camera’s being fixed (I pressed a few mystery buttons and now it won’t take pictures) I thought you might enjoy this series that Julia sent me.  Julia got them from her tía segunda, her mother’s cousin.  In English, that would be her first-cousin-once-removed – I have lots of them, both my mother’s cousins and my cousins’ children –  but I prefer tía segunda: it’s less unwieldy and it’s a nice name in itself.  The pictures are in Powerpoint.  To progress to the next image I press the right-hand arrow button on my keyboard or you could just click with your mouse; as I say, I’m a lousy button-presser, but both worked for me.  It’s below:

Amistades improbables