Max,
> Thanks, Kasper. I still hope to develop it further.
> [What is it birds sing? I used to ask my students what they heard, so I could
> add to the already standard cock-a-doodle-do, etc.
> They seldom helped me, but the Gould League here, ie bird-naturalists, put out a
> list, part of which goes:
Jonathan Skinner has some lovely little bird-call poems, he's working
his way through all the American warblers.
There are quite a few online at
http://www.onedit.net/issue4/jonathans/jonathans.html
He introduced me to the very entertaining tradition of coining phrases
that sound like bird calls as a memory device. Calls like: "Teakettle,
teakettle, teakettle;" "Beer beer beer bill me!," "Are you awake? Me
toooooo." There are whole bird guides full of these, but of course the
most fun is to be had going out to listen and inventing them for
yourself.
So when Jonathan's "Yellow Warbler" opens with the lines:
sweet sweet sweet
lemony
sweet
the audible stage is set straight off.
--Knut
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