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The lores, which sounds like a Dr. Seus character, is that space between a bird’s eyes and its beak. During the breeding season, the lores of the great egret (
Ardea alba) – a spectacular bird of snowy whiteness, as its scientific name suggests – turns an iridescent emerald green. It’s just about an inch long, this shimmering on both sides of the head, up from the spear-like yellow bill, and really only visible through binoculars. Yesterday, on the Lull Water, I saw one of the egrets, all wispy in the breeze, and its lores was flaring like some creature in a fairy tale. A century ago, these birds were almost eradicated to provide plumes to the millinery trade. (I plucked these pics from that innernet thing; sorry for the lack of credit.)
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I’d forgotten that the park is still open to cars during the rush hours. I’m rarely there during those times on weekdays, but yesterday after work I met them swooping around the drive as if they were on a NASCAR track. Madness. Most of vehicles had only one person per car. Insanity.
I read almost half of Chabon’s
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union last night. It’s a particularly strange novel: an alternative history, like Roth’s
Plot Against America, steeped in nostalgia and insecurity, but eminently readable. If I wasn’t such a New Yorker (Lenny Bruce: “Everybody in New York is a Jew, even the Catholics”), I’d be mighty lost amid the ganifs, pishers, shtarkers, shtekelehs, eruvs, & etc. Nu?
2 comments:
Do we humans have lores too? Truncated ones?
I sure have one. In breeding season, anyway.
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