|
WARNING: THIS MESSAGE CONTAINS EXTREME
TRIVIA
Oh dear, John, perhaps a little trivia will cheer you
up. I know you enjoy that sort of thing.
Enclosed is a picture of 2 N American birds, an American
('Eastern') Crow and a Fish Crow. The title is "THE PORTENTOUS RAVEN
SHARES EXTREME CUNNING WITH THE COMMON CROW" (because a raven picture (omitted)
was on the same page). The picture is from a 1937 edition of 'The
Book of Birds'. This might well have been the book that won World War
2. According to Stephen Moss in "A Bird in the Bush: a social
history of birdwatching", the British C-in-C Lord
Alanbrooke, notoriously keen on his birds, was unable to get a copy until
General Eisenhower found one and flew it across the Atlantic for him, and this
enormously improved relations between the two important men. You may
notice that, coincidentally, the painting is by 'Allan Brookes' who had no other
connection with Lord Alanbrooke, but according to Roger Tory Peterson was a
retired Canadian army major who developed a method of painting birds using
transparent watercolour touched up with tempera or opaque white or
gouache. However, Peterson complained that Brooks 'often gave small birds
an unnatural fullness at the nape of the neck'.
|
