On Nov 11, 2017, at 4:36 PM, Blake Allison <[log in to unmask]> wrote:Some of you may have heard of Helen Macdonald's highly acclaimed 2015 book "H is for Hawk." After the death of her father, the grieving Macdonald withdrew from her social milieu and ended up keeping company with a goshawk named Mabel that she raised and trained to hunt. I have not read it but heard her interviewed a few weeks back by Terry Gross on "Fresh Air." It was a fascinating story.Blake AllisonLyme, NH 03768-3400On Saturday, November 11, 2017, 11:54:03 AM EST, Mark Council <[log in to unmask]> wrote:My brother keeps a flock of about 40 chickens in a small clearing in the woods at his place in Brookfield. He usually has only about two or three roosters who do a good job of standing guard for the ladies, and even though their crowing must sound like a dinner bell to whatever predators might be within earshot, there have been surprisingly few bloodbaths over the years. A mangey fox late this summer managed to take a couple; aerial assaults have been limited despite a nesting pair of goshawks a quarter of a mile or so away. The big female managed a kill summer before last, killing a free-ranging hen and frequenting the carcass on the ground for five consecutive days.Chickens generally aren’t known for their intelligence, but they do get the smarts about big birds flying over them pretty quickly. This spring, a returning turkey vulture took a fairly low flight over the pen, and at least one of the roosters issued the alarm and thirty some hens tried to make a hyper-hasty retreat through the tiny henhouse door at the same time. My brother says it was the best laugh has had in a long time---It's not by chance that the dark center of human eye, the pupil, is actually an empty hole through which the world becomes known to us. Likewise, in a spiritual sense, the I is the empty center through which we see everything. It's revealing that such a threshold is called the pupil, for it is only when we are emptied of all noise and dreams of ego that we become truly teachable. -Mark NepoTo post messages, send e-mail to: [log in to unmask] Set your e-mail application to PLAIN TEXT ONLY to post messages. To contact the list owner: [log in to unmask] To unsubscribe: E-mail this command to [log in to unmask] UNSUBSCRIBE UV-Birders To change your e-mail address: E-mail this command from your old address to: [log in to unmask] CHANGE UV-Birders [new e-mail address]
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