A bird in the hand is worth you in my bush

Here's something none of you know about me, and I'm sure you don't because I forgot about it myself until last night when I was trying to explain to Figaro why I need a twelve times zoom on the digital camera I plan to get before long. Sorry for the long sentence - I was reading the chapter of Busman's Honeymoon last night that's in the form of the Dowager Wimsey's diary. Her sentences are mighty beasts.

I really like birds. I like watching them and photographing them, I used to do that in an organized fashion with my mum up North, and I decided I needed a ridiculous camera when J*Fish showed me a picture he'd taken of a sparrow wherein you could make out the individual little feathers on its chest. It makes me sad when there aren't enough birds around and disproportionately happy when there are - even if its just a bunch of fuckhead starlings roosting outside our bedroom window on a cold morning waking us the fuck up.

Toronto is hard in a sense because almost all the birds are pigeons. Even though it's so much warmer than where I grew up the grind of the city keeps them away and the lake is too out of my way to go admire the diving birds more than once every long while. So I get pigeons, and starlings and sparrows too, which Lexie occasionally attacks and - twice - has caught. But then when I wake up early enough and look out back - even in the mess of urban jungle where I live - I get to see cardinals, which we didn't have up in North Bay, and blue jays, which we did but I'm still fond of. And of course, the occasional turdus migratorius (pffffft!) which is unduly exciting to spot this late in the year since one expects them to have left this stupid shitty weather behind long ago.

And there maybe is the mystery of why I like these smelly, filthy little creatures so much, besides as a plaything for my cat. They don't really have to be where they don't want to be. Either they leave or they die. Pigeons aside (although I maintain a well-groomed wood pigeon would be one of the handsomest animals in creation if its head wasn't so tiny), they shun insalubrity and keel over when you bring them into a mine with too much carbon monoxide or whatever in it. But if they're happy, they sing, and what's more, fly stupidly huge distances to get to the places that make them happy or else find ways to adjust to ridiculous temperatures like in North Bay - by huddling or standing on a badly insulated roof or something - so they can be happy in retarded weather.

The times I was happiest in Paris - where, for all my complaints, I was often happy - was when I was walking home from parties at five or six in the morning. I'd always have to walk instead of take a cab or the metro because of the birds. During the day, Paris is just a pigeon's paradise with no sounds in earshot besides traffic and French people - but at dawn the whole town erupts into a symphony of beautiful birdsong . . . I've been to alot of beautiful places but I don't know if any of them were as beautiful as Paris when the birds are singing.

Anyways, my point is that I need a camera with high resolution and twelve times zoom. And that birds taste delicious.