why do birds suddenly appear ...

birds are such amazing creatures

these images were taken near mossy point, south coast nsw, and posted on flickr
the photographer noted that this white bellied sea-eagle was "around 30m away, going from it's known wingspan and body length. (This is only half the image because I thought it looked better cropped). That body is nearly 1m long"

i particularly like the quality of this image

the brown wing feathers look as they've been hewn from wood

this image reminds me of bruce armstrong's work

bunjil lives on wurundjeri way, near docklands. bunjil is the name for the eagle creator figure for the Wurundjeri people.

my dad loved birds. he studied them and painted them. especially water birds.

pink bits

time was pink bits used to refer to territories of the british empire

the world in 1897, when the sun never set ...

there are still some forlorn references to this -
a book, The last pink bits - travels through the remnants of the British Empire
an exhibition,The last pink bits on the map, "Pearls of the Seven Seas" is the theme of a one-day open day at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London ... celebrating the 14 remaining British Overseas Territories, which range from specks on the maps such as Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha to the pink wedge of the British Antarctic Territory. Attractions include talks, musicians and Cayman Island Rum Cake.

the world's moved on, and now pink bits are closer to home as it were
girls flaunt pink all the time. sometimes pink deepens to red.
we show pink on our lips, our shoes, our bags. like this lovely clutch from bagandshoe.com - i have a 70s glomesh bag that shimmies through the same pinks and reds.

last year i decided i wanted to wear a pink dress on my birthday. it didn't happen last year but perhaps it will this year, something vintage would be lovely
this dress is kind of kooky - some antebellum nightmare, but i love the rosettes and the colour is great. too musk for me, though, wouldn't suit me at all.
this colour is better and the style is more likely, similar to a leona edmiston dress i have.
ooh leona edmiston, hot pink pippa maxi - i could cut off that dumb last tier... even better pink
of course, there's no need to be quite this obvious.

one of the lovely things about pink bits is that they can be hidden like jewels secreted away, these beautiful jewelled rings are by katherine bowman - she makes the precious exquisite, like a fairy tale, like a star-burst
this is a detail from a ring for pieta
and this is the rich & glorious random ring

for style and cheek in flashing pink, though, it's hard to go past a galah,

and it's nice to see they score bigger than the british empire in pink bits

fishing for consequences

here's a good way of thinking:

when fishermen can't go to sea they repair their nets.
i read this piece of ole time wisdom in catherine deveny's article today

i like this very much. it hits me where i live.

i don't think I've been capable of going to sea for a very long time, but i'm repairing my nets. and i'm getting better at the repairs.

i used to swim a lot. i thought of it as both physical and mental exercise. i thought, it will stop me from drowning. i think the drowning was metaphorical rather than literal.

i also liked deveny's notion of billboards saying: Love Your Kids And Make Them Feel Safe

there'll be far more going out to sea when this happens.

of course, it's still a good idea to repair nets.

art 101

the place i work has a gallery downstairs and today i noticed that there is a very interesting exhibition on.
exotic queensland by anne marie graham
her work is opaque and rich, stark and abundant, and naïve.
i strolled through the exhibition today and loved what i saw.
my favourites are tree ferns with cockatoos, 2008, oil on linen
and cycad, 2008, oil on linen
they are works you could gaze at fore-ever, both intimate and wild. the works are much richer in life than in photographs. well worth a look. the exhibition's on from 6-30 may, and there is a lecture on saturday, 23 may

it's good to open your eyes to the world and discover new things.
i'm so very glad i ventured into this gallery today and met a new world.
her work reminds me of henri rousseau ...
though not quite as bloodthirsty as some of his jungle pictures

tigers and lions and bears

i have a thing for tigers. and sometimes lions. and okay, sometimes bears too.

i have a statue of the hindu goddess, durga, who rides a tiger
i am tigers fan
they have the best jumper, black with yellow sash just like miss universe (this may be apt with the way they've been playing the last 10-20 years), and
the best song - do yourself a favour and have a listen here - nice bit of banjo in the background, lyrics here, and a bit of "vision" of the boys from a while ago singing their victory song after a game


my sister has knitted me three "yellow and black" scarves and last year i realised a dream when i was given footy socks. i promptly cut the feet off and wore them as arm warmers.

here are some snazzy onitsuka tiger sneakers by asics - mexico 66

i love blake's poem tyger tyger burning bright

and if i'd read the jungle book as a kid i'd probably love the fact that the tigers chased themselves into a frenzy of tiger-butter, too

and recently i purchased a wonderful book by Susie Green called Tiger, one of the Reaktion animal series

because i have a habit of buying books and not necessarily reading them in a thorough-going way, i was challenged to read and then report back on some of what i had read. this was fantastic because i actually remember something from the book:

• the paw-prints of tigers are called pug marks
• tigers will retrace their steps (walk in their own pug marks) when stalking to minimise noise
• tigers are the most heaviest and most powerful of the big cats - they are sprinters and so will not pursue their prey over long distances
• tigers didn't attack people until the last few hundred years - although they had always been hunted, this had been the privilege of the very rich. it was only when the colonial english began their trophy-hunting in numbers that tigers started to fight back, and even so, it was only after independence when the wannabe indian middle-classes emerged that tiger-hunting became a popular passtime that tiger numbers and habitats truly dwindled

over on another continent, there is the wonderful world of lions
lions are cool because they hang out in prides

i love that they are collective creatures
we're so used to cats being solitary animals that to see lions hanging out together, sleeping and sitting on top of one another, lapping all in a row, it's heart-warming

and it's nice to pretend they're just really big pussy-cats

a fantasy that is entirely encouraged by the whole born free joy & george adamson-elsa the lion love story


it's crazy how noble lions look, with their immense manes and big broad noses ace article on george adamson and his kinship with lions

hidden words

hidden words!

hidden words
hidden words!

as well as real lions, i also love the goofiness of chinese lions, with their huge fluffy eyelids and their manic "good luck" dances

just in case you wanted to know all there ever was to know about lion dancing

this illustration is a fragment of a larger drawing - it reminds me of some illustrations in polish children's books i loved as a child.

many of which had bears in the woods. there is a bear in this illustration too, just to the right, out of frame. i think this detail is the stronger image.

especially with the spooky disembodied owl eyes.

more about bears may be added, i just can't think of anything

maybe pooh, and of course tigger

plastic

who knew rubbish was so beautiful?

Changzhi, China: Birds sit on a tree among plastic rubbish

or that it could look so much like blossoms

Photographs: Reuters, Guardian 24 hours

swash-buckle yourself in

one of my favourite pastimes when i was a kid was watching old movies, and i especially loved good fencing scenes, up and down staircases, in and out of windows, backwards, forwards, in silhouette ...

1. basil rathbone has tremendous fencing credentials (and a tremendous villanous moustache) and therefore was the ultimate villain, sneering down his swordstick at all sorts of heroes, one of the best, errol flynn as robin hood:


2. the court jester with danny kaye. it has all the derring do you could wish for. capes and princesses, castles by the sea and insane swashbuckling, with the jester going point for point with the ever villanous basil rathbone


3. in the great race, the evil baron wears the black moustache required of all villains. the great leslie and the baron fence with foils and then swap to "a man's weapon", the sabre! huzzah!!


4. scaramouche! with stewart grainger in leotards and a silly mask.
here the villain exchanges a dark moustache for a powdered wig and they fence along the velvet ballustrades of an opera house, how dashing,


5. gene kelly in the three musketeers, a soupy, soppy movie, but has some beautiful overthetop costumes, and a particularly cheeky sword fight with kelly wiggling a saucy bottom


6. last but definitely not least, is the wicked & witty sword play in all about eve, tongues as sharp as rapiers...