As I mentioned yesterday, I took advantage of the sun and took some pictures from around the neighborhood. As I write this now, a few stray flakes of snow are hesitantly drifting down outside my window. I’m glad I took the opportunity while I had it.
This picture is from a couple of weeks ago, actually. I didn’t go to the cemetery yesterday, but it is one of the cool places near home.
The sun is low in the sky, even at noon. I think most of the traffic on side roads is people looking for a place to park.
A crowded street, looking down to an interesting old building. There’s a river down there somewhere. I should go look at it sometime.
No excuse for being late to a service at this church. Hey God, what time is it?
One thing about living near this beast: No matter where I am in the city, I know the direction home. But, wait a minute… What are those things crawling on it? Could they be… nah, that would be crazy. They couldn’t possibly be…
Giant Iron Babies!!!!
As I mentioned above, there are a few more pictures over in the photo gallery, including more Giant Iron Babies and more from the cemetery. Take a look!
I think it is a pheasant, and not a dead chcken.
He’s not dead, he’s just restin’! Czech Chickens are known for slippin’ their necks into a noose and hanging about for a few winks!
He was a brightly-colored old bird, and at first I took him for a pheasant as well. But the comb and the size said “rooster” to me. Although not confident of my eatin’ bird identification skills, I am quite sure after hanging around for a few winks for a few days, he was dead, all right.
Of course, all of this is really splitting hairs (or feathers), since chickens and pheasants are very closely related. Our domestic chickens are descendants of an Asian wild pheasant. So technically, you could call a chicken a pheasant and still be correct. Or if you wanted to be really correct, you could look up the Latin name for the family that includes both chickens and pheasants (I think it’s something like gallinidae) and use that.
Speaking of eatin’ bird identification, that’s exactly how John James Audubon stayed alive. He was literally a starving artist. He would kill a bird, set it up in poses to paint pictures of it, and then he’d cook it and eat it.
You’d think Audubon’s guide would have included flavor as an identifying characteristic. People look at me in surprise when I call JJA “The man who shot almost every type of bird in North America”.
I hadn’t realized chickens and pheasants were such close chums, but when it comes right down to it, “chicken” is a funnier word than “pheasant”. Perhaps had I checked the dead chicken on the landing, his genus would have been tattooed on the back of his neck.
You should try the Zlata Bezant (Golden Pheasant) beer from Slovakia. Good stuff.