Digger at rest.The other day I try to photograph a pigeon attracted by a bird-feeder which has been suspended from the upper frame of a window overlooking The Grove. The feeder, one of those, cylinders made of netted wire, through which birds can pull peanuts. This one is designed for tits and other birds smaller than pigeons which can hang on to the wire while pecking at the nuts. The pigeon has to flap its wings to keep its balance while at work because its claws are too large for the feeder and there is nowhere on the window to perch. The flapping is tough going and after a while the bird has to take a break on the window sill. The photograph is unsatisfactory partly because of the rapidly moving wings and partly because wings and pigeon are confusingly reflected in the window pane together with the branches of trees opposite the window. This afternoon, several days later, the pigeon (something tells me it is the same one) is still flapping in front of the feeder, and keeping guard on the window-sill over its source of delicacies below when at rest. My camera arm itches to have another go.
My scrap book is evolving. I realise that its charm lies (for me) in the oddities which turn up side by by side, differences of scale and the clash of images. A small reproduction of Bronzini's Allegory of Venus and Cupid, for example, joins forces in one corner of a page with photographs of The Angel of the North, a collared dove and a bicycle So much passes in front of my eyes in newspapers and magazines which would disappear for ever were it not for the impulse which makes me want to herd them together. Part of the fun is making sure that all the space on every page is filled. Today I cut out a line of several gold fish from an advertisement, I think, for a bank of building society. Now they swim along the bottom of a page underneath a reproduction of an Indian painting of women dancing in a forest and next to a giant tortoise.
4 comments:
My heart goes out to this hardworking Pigeon. If he only had a "friend" to balance him/her on the opposite side it might help them both. I know most people dislike Pigeons.
I'm fond of these gentle and smart birds and bring them peanuts in the park along with feeding the Squirrels.
I decided to look up the French for scrapbook. Inadequacies in translation are often a clue to wider cultural differences, proof that the French haven't bothered coming up with an interesting word of their own because the concept doesn't interest them. This would seem to be the case with scrapbook which - dully - is given as album.
The craze for 'le scrapbooking', in French as elsewhere, which has had a mention or two at mine, not altogether positively, of late, is a very different thing from what you are doing. It seems to consist of buying very expensive tools, widgets, frills and furbelows to adorn one's scrapbook pages, the original content of which seems unclear and a fairly small element.
I have been meaning to follow your example and buy a plain scrapbook in which to collect items of random interest which one is loath to throw away but uncertain how to keep. Many of them end up on my kitchen notice board, which has become a groaning palimpsest which is threatening to burst from the wall under its own weight.
CC Pigeon still at it.
L da P and Lucy Another advantage of this sort of scrap book is that the bits and pieces apart form being preserved have a new life and quite a different one.
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