Black-crowned Night-heron (Nycticorax nycticorax, 夜鹭). Immature.
A common bird the world over, but not safe everywhere: they are now critically imperiled near my family home in British Columbia. At this Changsha pond, the 'no fishing' signs are no deterrent to anglers. Fortunately this night heron grew tired of playing with the abandoned hook and float before it was hurt.
“His last speech in the House of Lords, on February 14, 1933, was not on politics, but was a plea for control of the emptying of ships’ oil round our coasts, a practice most destructive of the birds that float on the waves. Previous speakers had spoken for the birds: he added a further argument:G.M. Trevelyan, Grey of Fallodon: Being the Life of Sir Edward Grey Afterwards Viscount of Fallodon (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1945; 1937), p. 362.
My Lords: I do not wish for a moment to minimize the terrible effect of oil pollution on bird life, which has been so forcibly put before your lordships. But there is one other aspect of the matter I would like to bring forward. One of the most famous tributes in our literature to our sea is that it performs its work of preventing the pollution of our shores.
[The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores.
Keats’s Last Sonnet.]
Is all that to come to an end? Apart from what oil pollution does to birds, it is a horrible thought from our own point of view that our shores should be filthy. We are really proud of our sea, and rely upon the Government to take some action if possible to prevent it.”
Intermediate egret (Ardea intermedia, 中白鹭).
The summer is a great time for herons in Hunan, including great, intermediate, little and cattle egrets. These names suggest that the birds differ in stature: but in the field it can be hard to measure individual birds; and in reality the little, cattle and intermediate egrets are often about the same size. But the intermediate egret can be quickly distinguished from the little egret by its black (not yellow) feet and from the great egret by its shorter bill. During the nonbreeding season, cattle egrets can be similar in plumage to intermediate egrets but they are always more squat with their shorter legs and shorter necks; they are also less fond of wading into the water.
The colour of their bills is another clue. Cattle egrets always have yellow bills. Little egrets always have black bills. Curiously, in Asia the bills of intermediate and great egrets are yellow but become black during breeding season, while the bills of their European, American and African cousins are yellow all year round.
There are always many little egrets in the wetlands around Yuelu Mountain (嶽麓山) but only during the dog days do intermediate egrets frequent the waters: most likely because of the superfluity of fish. Last week, this egret was devouring plenty of sharpbelly in Xianjia Lake (咸嘉湖), though it was driven from fishing ground to fishing ground by small but territorial moorhens.
Conturbabantur Constantinopolitani,
Innumerabilibus sollicitudinibus.
(The Constantinopolitans were dismayed by countless cares.)
Notes:
My translation. A nineteenth-century history of London, relates the following:
A good story is told, illustrating the rivalry which has existed for three centuries between Westminster and Eton Schools. It is said that the Etonians on one occasion sent the Westminster boys a hexameter verse composed of only two words, challenging them to produce a pentameter also in two words so as to complete the sense. The Eton line ran thus:—George Walter Thornbury and Edward Walford, Old and New London: a Narrative of its History, its People and its Place, 6 vols (London: Cassell, 1879-1885), III, p. 472.
“Conturbabuntur Constantinopolitani.”
The Westminster boys replied to the challenge “by return of post” :—
“Innumerabilibus sollicitudinibus.”
As the Eton line contains an obvious false quantity, the Westminster boys, who contrived to steer-clear of mistakes, may be allowed to have had the best of it.
When Oxford sent Cambridge this two-word hexameter, challenging them to complete a distich: Conturbabantur Constantinopolitani, Cambridge replied: Innumerabilibus sollicitudinibus.Harry C. Schnur, ‘The Factotum: Some Varieties of the Latin Hexameter’, The Classical World, 53.5 (1960), pp. 153-157 (p. 157).
Pale Grass Blue (Pseudozizeeria maha, 酢浆灰蝶). Mating pair.
A small white butterfly found from India to Japan, they are easy to identity with their distinctive series of spots. From early spring to late autumn they are ubiquitous in Changsha and they might well be the most common butterfly here. In the wet spring, their undersides are more distinctly brownish grey (male) or brownish black (female), but in our current dry season their underside wings are paler, though the male retains more of its brown.
Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1928), ‘Reminiscences of a Student’s Life’, Arion, 4.2 (1965; first pub. 1925), p.324.
Though I have lived most of my life with educationalists, I have little interest in education. I dislike schools, both for boys and girls. A child between the ages of eight and eighteen, the normal school years, is too young to form a collective opinion, children only set up foolish savage taboos. I dislike also all plans for “developing a child's mind,” and all conscious forms of personal influence of the younger by the elder. Let children early speak at least three foreign languages, let them browse freely in a good library, see all they can of the first-rate in nature, art, and literature—above all, give them a chance of knowing what science and scientific method means, and then leave them to sink or swim. Above all things, do not cultivate in them a taste for literature.
Thosea sinensis (扁刺蛾).
A species of slug caterpillar moth. Several times in early July, I came across these caterpillar on rocks and maesa trees in the forested areas on and around Yuelu Mountain (嶽麓山). So often were they in the company of tiny ants that I suspected they might be myrmecophiles. I have not seen any since, until today when I came across one late summer straggler.
Thomas Herring, Letters from the late most reverend Dr. Thomas Herring:
Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, to William Duncombe (London: printed for
J. Johnson, 1777), p.351:
Revealed religion is built upon natural; and if we undermine this, that will fall with it.
Male Yellow-bellied Prinia (Prinia flaviventris, 黄腹鹪莺)
From April to early June, the cascading songs of this yellow-bellied prinia were flowing along with the Xiang river (湘江). He sang for longer than the other nearby prinia, even through the early summer's forcible and bright mid-day hours. And I still see him moving from reed to reed in the same part of the western riverside, but his singing has stopped: for better or worse he must have abandoned his search for a summer mate. But he is still more active than the others; even when most other birds have settled for cooler catchments and reedbeds, he is often about.
There never was a merry world since the fairies left dancing, and the parson left conjuring. The opinion of the latter kept thieves in awe, and did as much good in a country as a justice of the peace.
Ovid, Amores, III.1.5-10:
hic ego dum spatior tectus nemoralibus umbris,Statius, Silvae, I.2.7-10:
quod mea, quaerebam, Musa moveret opus.
venit odoratos Elegia nexa capillos,
et, puto, pes illi longior alter erat.
forma decens, vestis tenuissima, vultus amantis,
et pedibus vitium causa decoris erat.
While I meandered here, submerged in the sylvan shadows,
I asked what task my Muse should undertake.
Elegy appeared: her hair tied in scented locks and,
I believe, one of her feet was longer than the other.
She had a shapely figure, the most delicate dress, a face for love,
and the flaw in her feet was the source of her grace.
quas inter uultu petulans Elegia propinquat
celsior adsueto diuasque hortatur et ambit
alternum furata pedem, decimamque uideri
se cupit et medias fallit permixta sorores.
Pert Elegy approaches their [the Muses] presence:
uncommonly tall, she entreats and coaxes the goddesses.
Concealing her alternate foot, she desires to be seen as
the tenth muse, and mingle inconspicuously amongst her sisters.
_-_Elegy_(1899).jpg "William-Adolphe Bouguereau - Elegy")
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), Elegy (Private Collection, Wikicommons)
Notes:
My translations.
furata: Sandstroem's conjecture. futura M; suffulta Leo, Courtney; fulcire Slater. For a complete list of conjectures, see P. Papinius Statius Volume V: Siluae, Readings and Conjectures, comp. by J.B. Hall with A.L. Ritchie & M.J. Edwards (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021), p.30.
Also see:
D.A. Slater, 'Conjectural Emendations in the Silvae of Statius', The Journal of Philology, 59 (1907) 133-160, p.151.
C.L. Howard, 'Notes on Statius', Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 90 (1959) 117-130, pp. 117-120.
Hops Angleshade (Niphonyx segregata, 乏夜蛾).
I have seen small numbers of these sober moths over the past few weeks in the vegetation by the river. This one is hiding its antennae under its body.
Common Bluetail (Ischnura senegalensis, 褐斑异痣蟌).
Throughout the summer, if one searches around the bushes and forested areas adjacent to water one will often find a common bluetail damselfly resting on a leaf. Sometimes the females have a yellow ochre thorax but usually it is blue or bluish green on both sexes. They all have khaki yellow stripes running along the sides of their abdomens for five or four-and-a-half segments terminating in an eighth azure blue segment, a penultimate segment of black and blue, and a final short segment with black on the dorsum and subtle yellow stripes on the sides. They seem placid but are hunters in their domain.
Alain Robbe-Grillet interviewed by Shusha Guppy, ‘The Art of Fiction No. 91’, The Paris Review, 99 (1986):
INTERVIEWER
Do you mean that memory is imagination, that we invent our own life in retrospect or indeed as we go along?
ROBBE-GRILLET
Exactly. Memory belongs to the imagination. Human memory is not like a computer that records things; it is part of the imaginative process, on the same terms as invention. In other words, inventing a character or recalling a memory is part of the same process. This is very clear in Proust: For him there is no difference between lived experience—his relationship with his mother, and so forth—and his characters. Exactly the same type of truth is involved.