New Design for this blog

Welcome to a completely new design for this blog.

My son Sim’ (The Rhyme of Sim‘) does all the technical stuff on my three blogs and he has completely redesigned the layout and look of each blog. I love what he has done with the photo of the Sulphur Crested Cockatoo in the photo above. Let me know what you think in the comments.

He has also done a facelift of my other two blogs.

Check them out here:

An Ugly Duckling

On my writing blog I have been writing about the meanings and origins of various idioms we use in everyday speech and writing. Many of these expressions relate to birds in some way. Here is another of them.

This week’s idiom: ‘An ugly duckling.’

Meaning:

An awkward, ungainly, unattractive child who develops into a graceful, beautiful adult is said to be an ugly duckling.

Origins:

The expression comes from the Hans Christian Andersen story called The Ugly Duckling. It was first published in 1843 and is widely regarded as a classic children’s story.

A mother duck hatches her brood only to find one duckling larger and uglier than the rest. He was very much a misfit and soon received much harassment from the other barnyard residents who eventually drive him away to fend for himself. After a struggle to survive the ugly ‘duckling’ develops into a beautiful swan.

The moral of the story is that inner beauty will always overshadow outer appearance. Interestingly, the Wikipedia article goes into a deeper analysis than I have here, postulating that this story is possibly a metaphor for Andersen’s own unhappy life.

Example:

As a child she was such an ugly duckling, but look at Sarah’s beauty and grace now.

Australian Wood Ducks with ducklings

Australian Wood Ducks with ducklings

Now for some lighthearted fun

Birding can be fun.

Birding is often great fun.

Birding can be really entertaining.

Birding can be very lighthearted at times.

Click on the link below for a good laugh. It may take a few minutes to load in dialup. Be sure to have your sound turned on.

Cartoon: Birds On A Wire – hope you have a good laugh.

Birding Bloopers #11

Here is another entry in the current series of birding bloopers from the contributors to the Birding-Aus forum. This one comes from John and Ruth who were birding in the UK at the time.

Our birding blooper happened in UK in 1997. We were staying at a B&B on a pig farm in Lincolnshire. It was wet and foggy (what’s new) when we drove out past the pig sheds. There on one shed was a horned owl of some sort.

After screeching to a halt I made a mad grab for the camera and 400mm lens. Beauty we got off a couple of shots. Being in a hurry we moved on and our films were being sent to a processor who forwarded the finished prints to our daughter in London.

When we got to London we said did you see the great owl photos, her reply was less than enthusiastic “hadn’t we noticed the hook on the owls head for hanging it up”. It must have been there as some sort of deterrent to keep undesirables away from the pig sheds.

My thanks to John and Ruth who gave permission for me to use this.

To read more bloopers click here.

Question for readers:

When did you experience an embarrassing birding moment? Perhaps it was a mistaken identification. Perhaps you didn’t look carefully enough and were later proved wrong. Maybe the bird itself fooled you in some way.
I invite readers to submit their birding bloopers in the comments section below. If it’s good enough I might just feature it in a post of its own, with a link back to your blog (if you have one).

Photo Gallery Update

Mistletoebird

Mistletoebird

My son has done an update on and a redesign of our family photo gallery. This gallery currently has over 750 photos on a wide range of subjects including birds, flowers, animals, travel and much more.

Take a look.

Leave a rating.

Link: Hampel Photo Gallery

UPDATE: our photo gallery has just passed the 300,000 views today.

Red Capped Robin

Red Capped Robin