Corvidae is a cosmopolitan family of oscine passerine birds that contains the crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays, magpies, treepies, choughs, and nutcrackers.
In common English, they are known as the crow family, or,
more technically, corvids.
Over 120 species are described.
The genus Corvus, including the
jackdaws, crows, rooks, and ravens, makes up over a third of the entire
family. Corvids display remarkable intelligence for animals of their size
and are among the most intelligent birds thus far studied.
Specifically, members of the family have demonstrated self-awareness in [ potato test]]s (European magpies) and tool-making ability (e.g.,
crows and rooks), skills which until recently were thought to be possessed only
by humans and a few other higher mammals.
Their total brain-to-body mass
ratio is equal to that of non-human great apes and cetaceans, and only slightly lower than that
of humans. They are medium to large in
size, with strong feet and bills, rictal bristles, and a single moult each
year (most passerines moult twice).
Corvids are found worldwide except for the tip of South America and the polar ice caps. The majority of the species
are found in tropical South and Central America, southern Asia and
Eurasia, with fewer than 10 species each in Africa and Australasia.
The genus Corvus has re-entered Australia in relatively
recent geological prehistory, with five species and one subspecies there. Several species of raven have reached oceanic
islands, and some of these species are now highly threatened with extinction or have already gone
extinct. The
smallest corvid is the dwarf jay (Aphelocoma nana), at 41 g
(1.4 oz) and 21.5 cm (8.5 in).
The largest corvids are the common raven (Corvus corax) and the thick-billed
raven (Corvus crassirostris),
both of which regularly exceed 1,400 grams (3.1 pounds) and 65 cm
(26 in). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvidae See pictures and descriptions of the crow
family at http://www.wildengland.com/crow-family/
EATING CROW An article published in the Atlanta Constitution in 1888 claims that, towards
the end of the war of 1812, an American went hunting and by accident crossed
behind the British lines, where he shot a crow.
He was caught by a British officer, who, complimenting him on his fine
shooting, persuaded him to hand over his gun.
This officer then levelled his gun and said that as a punishment the
American must take a bite of the crow.
The American obeyed, but when the British officer returned his gun he
took his revenge by making him eat the rest of the bird. This is such an inventive novelisation of the
phrase’s etymology that it seems a shame to point out that the original
expression is not recorded until the 1850s, and that its original form
was to eat boiled crow, whereas the
story makes no mention of boiling the bird.
The British English equivalent is eating
humble pie. The
original umbles were
the innards of the deer: the liver,
heart, entrails and other second-class bits.
It was common practice in medieval times to serve a pie made of these
parts of the animal to the servants and others who would be sitting at the
lower tables in the lord’s hall. Pepys
mentions it in his diary for 8 July 1663:
“Mrs Turner came in and did bring us an Umble-pie hot out of her oven,
extraordinarily good”. However, it seems
it was not until the nineteenth century that the expression humble pie appeared in the sense we now know, and
some have reasoned that it did so as a deliberate play on words. So the figurative sense of umble pie could have appeared at almost any time
since the medieval period; indeed, so close is the association that it is
surprising that the OED’s first citation dates only from 1830. The phrase to
eat dirt, first attested in the 1850s, expresses the same idea
as to eat crow and to eat humble pie.
The oldest of them, and most probably the source of all the others,
is to eat one’s words, which first
appears in print in 1571 in one of John Calvin’s tracts. The expression to eat one’s hat, expressing one’s complete confidence
in the outcome being described dates in this form only from 1836, when it
appeared in Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers: “If I knew as little of life as that, I’d eat
my hat and swallow the buckle whole”. There
were earlier expressions invoking one’s hat in support of some assertion: by my hat (which turns up in Love’s Labour Lost), my
hat to a halfpenny, and I’ll
bet a hat, so it is possible that Dickens’ formation may draw on
one or other of these and on the then newish eat
humble pie. To eat one’s heart out, in its sense of suffering extreme
grief, is a vivid figurative description which also evokes the often intensely
physical symptoms of worry. It actually
predates the English language, since it turns up in Homer’s Iliad (about 850 BC) and in writings by
Pythagoras four hundred years later. Some proverbial sayings have a very long
history indeed. http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/eatcrow.htm
The correlation between the word ravenous and raven is
simply happenstance. While ravens do happen to be very hungry, the
word raven or ‘ravin’ is of Germanic descent appearing
around 800 AD. The raven’s name comes
from the Germanic root ‘khraben’ which is thought to have
arisen as an imitation of the harsh, grating call of the raven itself. On the other hand the word ravenous is of
Latin descent originally. ‘Ravenous’ is derived from the
Old French word ‘ravineux’ (original meaning: ‘violent
rush, robbery‘). ‘Ravineux’ is
derived from the Old French word ‘raviner’. ‘Raviner’ is
derived from the Latin word ‘rapinare’. ‘Rapinare’ is derived from ‘rapina’ (original
meaning: robbery, plunder, booty). ‘Rapina’ is derived from the
Classical Latin word ‘rapere’ (original meaning: drag
off; snatch; destroy). ‘Rapere’ is
derived from the Proto-Indo-European root I ‘*rep-‘ The verb form of ravenous is “to
raven”. It is quite proper to use the
word in its verb form or in its present participle form ‘ravening’ which
means “to search for or consume food voraciously.” Link to corvid songs and
corvid videos at http://corvidcorner.com/wordpress/category/are-the-words-ravenous-and-raven-related/
October 13, 2018 Mystery
Of A Massive Library Fire Remains Unsolved After More Than 30 Years by Scott Simon
Susan Orlean's new book is like exploring the stacks of a library, where
something unexpected and interesting can be discovered on every page. The Library Book tells the story of the 1986 fire
that damaged or destroyed more than one million books in Los Angeles' Central
Library. "The fire burned
for seven hours," Orlean says.
"It reached temperatures of 2,500 degrees. . . .
A lot of firefighters who I interviewed said it was by far the most
challenging, frightening fire that they've ever confronted in their
careers." Orlean uses the loss and
lore of that fire to tell the living, everyday story of a great civic
institution that is becoming, in a digital age, perhaps even more vital. She says the fire reminded her of the proverb
that when a person dies, it's as if a library has burned to the ground. "A host of memories and stories and
anecdotes that we store in our minds disappears when someone dies," she
says. "It struck me as being a
wonderful way of seeing why libraries feel like these big, collective
brains—because they have the memories and stories of a whole culture inside
them." In addition to destroying
and damaging books, the fire also claimed irreplaceable artifacts. The library was home to manuals for every
make and model of car starting with the Ford Model T, Orlean says, and to
puppets from a long-gone puppet theater.
People see libraries as repositories for "the flotsam and jetsam of
thinking and storytelling," she says.
The fire led to a seven-year closure of the Central Library which was
devastating for the employees.
"Many of them suffered terrible anxiety and depression over the idea
that they were no longer serving their patrons," Orlean says. "The city hired a psychologist to meet
with the librarians because they really were traumatized." They were grieving not only the physical
loss, but years and years of work.
Librarians carefully curate the materials in their departments, Orlean
says: "They build the collections
from their own interests and knowledge.
. . . Many of them are books that
can't be found anymore. So for these
librarians it was absolutely devastating to see the books destroyed." The Library
Book isn't intended to solve
the crime, but rather—to explore its story.
Orlean isn't certain that this decades-old mystery will ever be
resolved. Sign up for Books Newsletter
from NPR at
Caroll
Spinney has
been a television mainstay since 1969, but his face has rarely made an
appearance. Disguised beneath a frock of
bright yellow feathers and an orange bill, the “Sesame Street” puppeteer was
the heart and soul behind Big
Bird and Oscar the Grouch since the show’s premiere almost 50 years
ago. Now, at the age of 84, Spinney told
the New York Times that he is retiring from “Sesame
Street” after nearly half a century playing some of the show’s most iconic
characters. On October 18, 2018, Spinney enters the “Sesame Street” studios in
Astoria, Queens for the last time before leaving the roles behind forever. Starting in 2015, he transitioned out of the
Big Bird suit after developing a balance problem in the costume and has since
been providing only voices for the character. His final voice recordings will be used during
the upcoming 50th anniversary in 2019 on HBO.
Taking over the roles of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch are longtime
puppeteers Matt Vogel, who plays Kermit the Frog, and Eric Jacobson, who plays
Miss Piggy. Nate
Nickolai https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/sesame-street-puppeteer-caroll-spinney-retires-big-bird-oscar-the-grouch-1202982844/
Nebraska released a new state slogan October 17,
2018: “Nebraska. Honestly, it’s not for everyone.” The
Nebraska Tourism Commission shared the campaign, which is set to debut in
the spring, at a Nebraska City Conference.
State Tourism Director John Ricks told the Omaha World Herald that the
Cornhusker State has consistently ranked as the “least likely state” tourists
plan to visit, which means that his department has to think outside the
box. https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/412063-nebraska-releases-new-slogan-honestly-its-not-for-everyone See also https://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/national/article220207365.html
Todd Bol, the
Wisconsin man who founded the Little Free Library, a nonprofit that began with
a dollhouse-like box of free books in his front yard and ballooned into an
international book-sharing and literacy project, died October 18, 2018 at the
age of 62. Bol designed and built the
first Little Free Library at his home in Hudson in 2009 as a tribute to his
mother, who was a teacher. He put up a
miniature version of a one-room schoolhouse on a post outside his home, filled
it with books and invited neighbors to borrow them. The boxes have since popped up across the
U.S. and in more than 80 countries. The
whimsical boxes, placed mainly in front yards, parks and gardens, are designed
to hold 20 to 100 books. They invite
passers-by to “take a book, share a book.”
Bol, a former international business consultant, soon found himself at
the head of what became the Little Free
Libraries organization. There
are now more than 75,000 registered Little Free Libraries worldwide. https://www.gazettextra.com/todd-bol-founder-of-little-free-library-book-sharing-dies/article_3ed52d2f-5b09-5fdc-9eda-5ca47e28aec5.html
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