Tag: sunshine

Loving England

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I was in love with the country from the moment I stepped outside into the cold and  almost constant drizzle. I loved the way the moody pen-and-ink skies would suddenly burst open just long enough to reveal muted golden hues from a distant sun then close again. While Joan flapped her arms like a penguin to keep warm, I reveled in weather so different from what I’d been used to my entire life: sunshine, sunshine, sunshine. From the middle of Africa to Southern California. The cold felt good, energizing, renewing. The picture below is of me on my first day in the pouring rain trying to get to close to two little lambs. I didn’t mind getting soaked at all.

The other thing about England was that I felt like I’d come home; the same feeling I had when I first landed in America. How could that be? But it makes sense. My schooling and the customs I grew up with were almost entirely British, and that’s where most of my ancestors are from—my mother’s father was from London, and my other grandfather was from Scotland. When I told Joan how I felt about England, she hopped on it. “You’re moving here. You can stay with me. First thing is you need to do is re-establish your British citizenry.”

Well, that’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, as I had to give up my British citizenship to become an American citizen. Joan wouldn’t hear of it. She urged me to write to my Uncle Percy in Umlhanga Rocks, South Africa to see if he has any evidence of my parents’ British ancestry. This way I could re-establish my British status and live part of the year in England with Joan. Don’t you just love it?

However, you need to wonder just how long I would last. You see, I’m a bit of an iconoclast.  I like to mix it up. While I loved the historic buildings, ancient traditions, quaint shops—some with mannequins from the sixties—and radio programmes that broadcast listeners’ personal birthday and anniversary greetings, to the solid genuineness of the people, I was afraid I might end up finding it stifling. But hey, it would only be for part of the year, right? Well, that’s if Uncle Percy has those documents.

Y is For Yellow Animals

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I love the color yellow. For one thing it was my dad’s favorite, which then became my favorite as a child. Over the years I flirted with this color and that, pink, white, baby blue, red, and green, but yellow always stayed in the background, like a patient lover waiting for my return. And return I do again and again, because yellow is all about sunshine and cheer and illumination. And for animals sometimes it’s about warning away predators by adopting nature’s version of road racing’s Caution flag. For others, matching the color of the plants you live on is a good way to avoid predators and/or deceive prey. Like the yellow crab spider, pictured below.

Caterpillars are often yellow as well, regardless of the color of the butterfly it will someday become. The snake-like larva below combines enlarged eyespots with bright yellow coloration in an effort to dissuade predators from considering it for their next meal.

Not all bright yellow frogs are poisonous but a significant number are, like the one pictured below, a tropical poison dart frog. Soft-bodied and small, these tropical frogs are preyed upon by a huge number of reptiles, birds and mammals. Being bright yellow warns potential predators to beware of the possibility of poisoning – a threat that works whether the yellow frog is poisonous or not.

Yellow is not a common color for snakes, who rely heavily on ambush predation as a hunting technique. Most of the yellow snakes people are familiar with are actually albinos bred to satisfy demand from pet owners who appreciate the beauty of a yellow snake, patterned or otherwise.

The wide variety of wholly or partially yellow birds, combined with their naturally beautiful range of movement, makes them popular subjects for amateur and professional photographers alike. The bird below, a type of woodpecker known as the Yellow-Shafted Flicker, is caught here just as it leaves its nest somewhere deep in an American forest.