2024-10

29th October 2024

I’ve just been reading two of my favourite books – The Curious Bird Lover’s Handbook by Niall Edworthy and The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers by David Wells. I’m not quite sure whether the bird book is a handbook for bird lovers who are curious or for lovers of curious birds – but either way, the book is right up my street. And yesterday I discovered a couple of interesting and curious facts. Birds don’t produce urine. And that is true for all birds, except for, curiously, storks and vultures, which do produce a sort of urine. And even more curiously, they use this ‘urine’ on a very hot day, such as those we have here in Israel at this time of year, to cool themselves down. They release the ‘urine’ on their own bodies and as it evaporates it cools them down. This technique, known as urohidrosis – a word that doesn’t appear in my dictionary – is also used by some basking seals, I guess if they’re far too lazy to get back in the water. Here’s some serious advice for you – if you’re out and about on a very hot day in Israel or elsewhere, and you need to cool yourself down – well, head straight for an airconditioned café and have an ice-cream or iced coffee – don’t even think about any such outlandish hydrotherapy!

In my opinion, the most interesting number of all, is the first number that isn’t considered by mathematicians to be interesting. In this book that number is 39, which is recorded in the book as being interesting for being uninteresting. Here is a curious fact – the golden ratio, known also as the divine proportion, 1.61803…., when squared is 2.61803…. This is the only positive number whose square is exactly 1 more than the number itself. Even more curiously this number, the golden ratio, 1.61803…. appears in nature, most notably in the spiral pattern of sunflower seeds. The angle between successive seeds in its head is approximately the golden angle (about 137.5 degrees), which is derived from the golden ratio.

I should probably get out more, rather than immersing myself in such curious books.

---

9th October 2024

Sitting Ducks

We visited one of Israel’s best-known nature reserves recently (I have been asked not to say which one) and met the Chief Ranger. I asked if there was anything interesting to see and was told that on that very morning the rangers had rescued some ducklings. A visitor had released into the wild some young birds that appeared to have previously been kept in a domestic environment. Releasing young ducks without their mother to look after them usually results in a very quick death. And indeed, the crows in the reserve were already eyeing them up when the rangers spotted them. The birds, instead of fleeing, which is what most wild birds do when seeing people, waddled affectionately towards the rangers, which is what gave the game away as to their former domesticity. The rangers gathered them up and temporarily caged them while awaiting a visit from the vet to check their health. The Chief Ranger is now looking for a suitable home for them where they will be able to live unthreatened by foxes, jackals or birds of prey.

“Releasing creatures into the wild sounds such an ethical thing to do,” we were told, “but it actually causes a whole lot of unnecessary suffering for them, as they are totally ill-equipped to fend for themselves or stay out of danger from predators.”

---

1st October 2024

We’ve just had a couple of weeks of running to and from the bomb shelters in Tiberias, dodging rockets and missiles fired at us by Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. As well as our own shelter at home, we’ve been in a shelter at our local supermarket, one at the doctor’s clinic and had to endure one attack taking cover in a ditch by the side of an Inter-City highway. We’re now in Jerusalem for a few days for Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) – and hoping for a quieter time.

One of my favourite Jerusalem activities is gazelle gazing in Gazelle Velley. Yesterday, I got to meet a rather handsome buck with beautifully ringed horns. The males use their horns to display their virility to potential mates, and also for foraging for food and to fend off predators. But why are their horns ringed? I’m really not sure, so I’ll be doing some research as there must be a good reason.

While I was focussing on gazelles Miriam spotted a flycatcher sitting on the fence – a spotted flycatcher, no less. Flycatchers make little sorties, known as sallies, to catch flies and then return to the same place from where they set off. This sallying, also known as hawking, is also particularly noticeable with dragonflies and so keeping the camera lens trained on the same place, even after they’ve gone off, is well worthwhile.

I also watched a pair of spur-winged plovers by the side of a small pond. Plover is pronounced to rhyme with lover and not with over. As you can see, the two birds I photographed had just had a plover’s tiff and weren’t talking to each other.

The blackbird I photographed, looking a bit shabby, hadn’t lost his feathers in a scrap, but had lost a few head feathers to make way for new ones – a process known as moulting, which birds do once or twice a year to renew the strength of their plumage.

A leopard doesn’t change its spots, but let’s hope and pray that our neighbours will grow new feathers, as birds do, and will live together peaceably with us in the New Year – a better year than the last, with the safe return of our hostages who’ve been held in captivity for almost a full twelve months.