One night a belligerent young baboon
decided he wanted to challenge the moon.
So he pointed his colourful arse at the sky
defying the moon until, bye and bye,
just as his legs were starting to ache
and his vertical bottom beginning to shake,
along came some clouds and the moon went in;
which he decided to count as a win.
Posts tagged with ‘mammals’
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Napowrimo #22: the baboon
22 April 2008 – 10:12 pm
Napowrimo #21: The Seal Voice Choir
21 April 2008 – 10:37 pm
If you stand on the beach on Holyhead
and listen attentively,
you may hear, above the sound of surf,
an unearthly harmony.
Upon a tiny rocky islet
out of sight of land
the world’s one and only seal voice choir
are sprawled on a patch of sand;
and sometimes, when the waves are still
and the breeze is off the sea
you can pick out [...]
Napowrimo #20: Iceweasels
20 April 2008 – 10:37 pm
Deep in the forests of Finland
where humans rarely go
are sometimes found unusual tracks
curving across the snow;
they’re rather like those of the stoat
but each is twelve inches by nine
And often nearby there’s a tuft of blue hair
caught in the bark of a pine.
If you spend a few years with the locals,
persuade them you’re discrete,
they may whisper [...]
Napowrimo #18: the Buffalo
18 April 2008 – 9:25 pm
A buffalo can make
a quite delightful pet,
as long as you can find
an easy-going vet
who doesn’t mind an animal
that’s really very boring,
apart from the occasional
trampling and goring.
~~~
A buffalo will often make
a charming household pet,
but just in case, make sure you have
an easy-going vet
who doesn’t mind an animal
that’s really very boring
(apart from the occasional
trampling and goring).
Napowrimo #15: The Platypus
15 April 2008 – 10:18 pm
Privately, the platypus feels
it’s only rotten luck
that people don’t refer instead
to the platypus-billed duck.
Napowrimo #12: Giraffe
12 April 2008 – 10:25 pm
The usual way to spot giraffe
is by their penetrating laugh;
so those which are a bit dejected
frequently go undetected.
Bat!
31 March 2008 – 5:35 pm
Exciting sighting: I saw a bat in the park today. It’s not completely unusual to see bats around here: I see a few in the summer, because it’s when I’m most likely to be outside at night. But not many. And to see one flying around over the park pond in daylight is most unusual.
I’ve [...]
Moby Dick
6 January 2008 – 11:39 am
I thought I ought to reread some of those Great Novels which are sitting on my shelves and I haven’t read for years. I’m not sure why I picked up Moby Dick in particular, but after a few pages I was thinking oh, man, I’d forgotten how funny this book is, and so brilliantly written. [...]
What a Walrus
9 December 2007 – 2:30 pm
Found while browsing the British Museum archive of 2D art, a walrus head drawn by Albrecht Dürer:
It looks even better viewed large. I think that deserves to be as famous as his equally marvellous rhinoceros.
All the better to eat you with
3 December 2007 – 9:27 am
If you particularly want to see this bigger, I’ve posted it to Flickr.
New camera, same old clichés
29 August 2007 – 10:33 am
I’ve got a new camera, so I thought I’d celebrate it in the approved internet fashion: catblogging. You can click through to Flickr to see larger versions.
This is Boris:
And this is Posy, who is a difficult cat to photograph, because she’s so black and shiny:
bird of the year: best performances in a supporting role
6 January 2007 – 12:53 am
Best Plant
All those rainforest plants were nice, and I enjoyed taking wildflower photos while I was in Spain. But, not least because it’s nice to pick a winner that I can actually identify, I’m going for the Galapagos Prickly Pear, Opuntia echios. On islands where there are giant tortoises and land iguanas, they’ve evolved woody [...]
In the Galapagos
26 October 2006 – 6:01 pm
I´ve got a couple of hours in Puerto Ayora (on Santa Cruz, in the Galapagos), so I thought I´d post a quick note.
I can recommend the Galapagos. For a start, the landscape is more varied and more beautiful than I expected; somehow in my head it was all rocks, but from island to island the [...]
Fox cubs
31 July 2006 – 10:25 am
The foxes have cubs at the moment. The foxes are pretty tame in London, since no-one hunts them, and once or twice I’ve seen the cubs playing on the lawn. Mainly you just hear them; squawking, screeching and making a high-pitched twittering like angry plovers.
The foxes and cats seem to co-exist in a state of [...]
Cute
12 June 2006 – 3:41 pm
A picture from my brother:
See the whole set here. And see also this story.
Whales watched.
21 April 2006 – 7:03 pm
The whales behaved very prettily - a group of Long-finned Pilot Whales came over and swam around the boat so we could see them. Also Common Dolphin and Striped Dolphin. They saw the first Sperm Whale of the season yesterday, apparently, but no such luck for us.
Also saw what I’m pretty sure must have been [...]
whale-watching
20 April 2006 – 5:40 pm
I’ve booked a whale-watching trip for tomorrow. I suspect this means a few dolphins and a pilot whale if you’re lucky, rather than enormous skeins of sperm whales stretching as far as the eye can see. But I figure it will also be a good way to see some pelagic birds - skuas, shearwaters, petrels [...]
Top ten animals - #2, Snow Leopard
3 February 2006 – 3:24 pm
What actually got me started thinking about this top ten animals list was a documentary about the Snow Leopard, Uncia uncia. Two film-makers had spent three years in Kashmir and managed to get about two minutes of what of the kind of action footage you’d normally expect from a wildlife programme - the cats hunting, [...]
Top ten animals - #8, Narwhal
17 January 2006 – 10:18 pm
I was surprised by how many cetaceans made it into my longlist. Part of it, perhaps, is that the difficulty of seeing marine animals adds to their desirability. And of course a lot of whales are *big*. Anyway, I considered Blue Whale, Killer Whale, Beluga, and Sperm Whale, and though Sperm Whale came closest (Moby [...]