“Redwing spring” series of articles

2008

2008 Jan

Jan 18 Fri

In Games, the pitch was so water-logged you’d need to be a fish if you wanted to play any sport (except swimming, kayaking, sailing, or water polo et cetera) on it. As we were not fish, we got to use the library computers instead. There’s a public-domain picture of a wolf on Wikimedia Commons (like Wikipedia but with pictures instead of encyclopedia entries), and this single image has nearly twenty million pixels in it! Just my luck that in Latin we’re translating a story about a wolf (lupus in Latin) on the computer!

Note: the wolf-picture is captioned “Canis lupus laying”. This does not mean that wolves lay eggs. The caption should really be “Canis lupus lying” because “lying” means “being in a horizontal position” whilst “laying” means “putting something else in a horizontal position”. If a bird lays an egg, the egg lies in the nest.

2008 Feb

Feb 01 Fri “STOAT”

On Friday 3 weeks ago, the wet stopped us from playing rugby; we were not fishes. Today, the cold (hail, sleet, high winds, snow... etc.) didn’t stop us from going outside. But I am no polar bear. Soon my hands were the colour of the hail and sleet around me: white and ghostly transparent. I quickly learned that handling the rugby ball made it worse. My teeth were chattering so much I could not speak. I was losing heat fast. Luckily Library and Lunch came before I caught pneumonia.

And speaking of Lunch, today was chips, beans, and pizza. The highlight of the culinary week.

Feb 03 Sun “DODO”

Did another piece

Of homework today.

Did another piece

Of homework today.

Feb 18 Mon “The Butterfly Song”

I wrote this (and an accompanying melody) in a Music lesson.

Feb 23 Sat “OWL”

On the dog walk today I saw some coots.

Water-birds which I also saw and snapped also include the mallards. Yes, I know this photo is of moorhens.

Look! There’s a magpie!

Feb 26 Tue “MOUSEY”

Ooh... mud is wet! And cold, as I found out in Rugby today. I fell over. No, I was pushed.

You might be interested to know that I saw a strange bird coming home from school. I mean, I was the one coming home from school, not the bird.

Feb 27 Wed “LOBSTER”

Remember the strange bird I saw yesterday? I’ve identified it as a... male linnet! Wow! A linnet! They’re very rare.

Feb 28 Thu “FLIES”

For some fierce-some reason I cannot remember today’s events. So here’s some facts about the date, like there is an Australian parrot commonly known as the “twenty-eight”: its call is (apparently) ‘wen’y-eight.

Lowly 28 is a “perfect” number - its factors (except itself) add up to itself. 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28. 8128 is another number with this property. The sum of the first five prime numbers is twenty-eight: 2 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 11 = 28.

It is also the number of days in a lunar month, approximately. Saturn also takes about 28 Earth-years to orbit the Sun.

Eight and twenty is also a “happy” number: its digital root (sum of its digits repeated) is one. 2 + 8 = 10, 1 + 0 = 1. The number of dominoes in a standard pack is, yes, 28.

“Sing a song of sixpence” (the nursery rhyme) features 28 characters: four-and-twenty blackbirds in a pie, one king counting money, one queen eating bread and honey, one maid hanging out the washing, and another blackbird biting the maid’s nose off. (If you think the twenty-fifth blackbird was actually in Verse 1’s pie, making 27 characters altogether, there is a longer version in which a wren sticks the nose back on with snuff: a twenty-eighth character.)

2008 Mar

Mar 03 Mon “ORANGUTAN”

‘N’ then, on the way home, I saw that linnet-thing again. It is so not a linnet! Not enough red.

Mar 04 Tue “GIBBON”

Badly, Lunch was extraordinarily weird. Why does my breath now smell of eggs, strongly? I’m [20%] sure it was an olive dish in front of me! How deceptive. I hope this olive-egg isn’t poisonous.

Now I know what that strange birdie I keep seeing is. It’s a redwing! Britain’s smallest thrush! Turdus iliacus!

Mar 06 Thu “MAGPIE”

’Ello Redwing! Are those worms tasty?

Mar 07 Fri “GNAT”

Today I also saw the redwing, but in a different location from where I usually see it.

Mar 11 Tue “MEERKAT”

Today I saw the redwing again... in a new location on my walk from school. I’ve got a mission: to take a photo of the redwing before it migrates to warmer parts in the spring. Hang on, next week is Easter... and Easter’s the start of spring...

Mar 13 Thu “GECKO”

Oh, hi redwing. Oh look! You’ve brought your family along too! How wonderful! (This isn’t meant to sound sarcastic.) My phone’s got a camera function...

Mar 17 Mon “AXOLOTL”

Look! Hi redwing! Are you hiding behind a car?

Mar 18 Tue “RHINOCEROS”

Oh, where are you redwing? You haven’t already migrated to more northerly parts, what with global climate change? Oh no!

2008 Apr

Apr 10 Thu “MONKEY”

You may like to know that I saw a redwing today! No, it’s a robin.

Apr 11 Fri “BONGO”

Oh, did I mention that there’s a flowerpot right outside our form room? Or that a duck has laid her eggs in it? Very sweet!

Apr 21 Mon “RORQUAL”

Quaint though it may seem, lunch was fish fingers. I really didn’t know fish had fingers.

Unexpected in some ways was English.

Look at all the spring colours! Listen to the birds singing away! Smell the freshly mown hay!

Apr 25 Fri “SLUG”

Look! I’m starting to enjoy tennis, well, soft tennis at least. Soft tennis differs from tennis tennis in that the ball is soft rubber, and there is a special racquet. Don’t ask me about the racquet.

Great gregarious greenfinches! A redstart! (I’m telling the truth, that’s what’s so amazing.) A redstart!

2008 May

May 02 Fri “The Day of the Diary”

Opus magnum meum diem natalem celebrat. My large piece of work is celebrating its birthday. The first article I wrote was on 2007 May 02; it’s not an article I deem worth having online.

May 06 Tue “TOMATO”

Oh good. Athletics was the 1,500 metres and the discus. More importantly, a beetle flew on to my arm as we (the boys in my class) were lining up for the discus. Someone killed Betelgeuse (say “beetle-juice”) while I was happily observing it. Unlucky Betelgeuse. He’s (though Betelgeuse could have been female) joined his namesake, up in the sky, a star in the constellation Orion.

Magpies are black and white, and made up of lots of little cells - Science.

And lunch was something wierd. Same as usual, then.

May 07 Wed “LAUREL”

Look! Those starlings are everywhere! They’re ubiquitous!

May 13 Tue “RAPTOR”

Remember the duck eggs from April 11th? They’ve hatched! The ducklings are all yellow and fluffy! With black streaks!

May 22 Thu “RHEA”

At first I thought is was a robin or a wren scurrying along the leaf litter, but then I saw that the birdie’s face and breast weren’t brown like a wren or red like a robin, but a dull silver-blue. Later, leafing through the bird-book, I found that no British (or European) bird had blue on the face and breast... except the dunnock, which “scurries along the on the ground with lots of tail-flicking, close to the cover of deciduous trees and bushes”... That’s my bird!