One river, two countries, and some contrasting wildlife this week. In Slovakia, this little fellow lives by the Danube:
Upstream, in Austria’s Donau-Auen national park, we met:
In Slovak, wild boar is “diviak”, which seems to mean literally “wild thing”. Rather appropriate!
After our superstorks finished their breeding so early, we didn’t know whether they’d start their migration early, or hang around to enjoy the Slovak summer a bit more. Fortunately they chose the latter.
They’re much harder to find these days, returning to the nest only when it’s time for bed, but I caught them feeding in the nearby meadow:
It was interesting to see the pair bond continuing, even after the chicks have left; recently we also heard them bill-clattering greetings when one of them returned to the nest late in the evening. Once they do start their migration, however, it will be alone and then in flocks, rather than as a pair.
Her, with ring:
And him:
Flying nestwards:
Eyes which have caught mine recently; starting with some Austrian insects:
Storks’ naturally high position is extremely suitable for glaring:
Oxford geese showed an interesting variety of colours:
While one wouldn’t want to upset the Headington kite:
Last weekend we made our usual stork visit, expecting to find that another one or two of the chicks had started flying. It was a bit of a shock to come across this:
After a wander round, we were about to leave when we caught sight of a few white specks in the distance. We gave chase, and found that it was indeed our family, out exploring the local meadow:
We were slightly over-eager, and caused a bit of a panic by getting too close:
But dropping by the nest again we found all the youngsters safely home.
With a bit of luck we should keep seeing them around until our own travels begin; then it’s the end of the beginning for their stories.
Our local storks, having started their breeding early, are now at a pretty advanced stage. The four chicks are almost fully grown, despite a diet which seems to have been heavy on vegetation rather than juicy frog and rodent. I still don’t know what this lump was, but they had fun with it:
As they’ve grown, there’s been an increasing amount of stretching:
and flapping:
Inevitably, a wing in the face on a hot day can lead to some tension:
And this week, one of them finally decided to escape. This might even have been his first flight — he was a truly terrible flier:
His eventual landing was safe, if not elegant:
All of them still spend most of their time on the nest:
The parents are as busy as ever; here the mother has just delivered a feed (interestingly, her … business activities have rendered her ring almost illegible):
So, we may not have these guys very much longer. The other set of parents were much slower off the mark, so they should be around for a while. Only two chicks there, but they’ve been getting some tasty rat:
52 books finished in the last six months (though the number is inflated slightly by the small, if well-formed, Wildeana).
Literature
Girl Meets Boy — Ali Smith
Between the Assassinations — Aravind Adiga
Last Man in Tower — Aravind Adiga
The Portable Veblen — Elizabeth McKenzie
Death and the Penguin — Andrey Kurkov
An Artist of the Floating World — Kazuo Ishiguro
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher — Hilary Mantel
The Steep Approach to Garbadale — Iain Banks
The Taxidermist’s Daughter — Kate Mosse
The Corrections — Jonathan Franzen
Oryx and Crake — Margaret Atwood
Rivers of Babylon — Peter Pišťanek
Fire Down Below — William Golding
Angels Over Elsinore — Clive James
Birchwood — John Banville
Mother Night — Kurt Vonnegut
Orlando — Virginia Woolf
Room — Emma Donoghue
On Chesil Beach — Ian McEwan
Standouts here were The Portable Veblen (a quirkier Jonathan Franzen), Angels Over Elsinore, which gave me a whole new perspective on Clive James, and (at the risk of a back-handed compliment) the first half of Room.
Wilde
A Woman of No Importance — Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde — Richard Ellmann
An Ideal Husband — Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being Earnest — Oscar Wilde
De Profundis — Oscar Wilde
Lady Windermere’s Fan — Oscar Wilde
Obviously, having finally got round to reading my 20 year old copy of Ellmann’s biography, I had to stop every so often to read the actual plays. So he gets his own section.
Trash
Signed, Picpus — Georges Simenon
Saints of the Shadow Bible — Ian Rankin
I, Partridge — Steve Coogan
I started reading Fleshmarket Close too, but stopped after about 20 pages when I still couldn’t decide whether I’d already read it. Took that as a sign.
SF/F
The Martians — Kim Stanley Robinson
Poseidon’s Wake — Alastair Reynolds
Redemption Ark — Alastair Reynolds
Solaris — Stanislav Lem
Aurora — Kim Stanley Robinson
Stories of Your Life and Others — Ted Chiang
River of Gods — Ian McDonald
Shikasta — Doris Lessing
In Viriconium — M. John Harrison
Ted Chiang was my big discovery here — philosophical and enjoyable SF stories. Having earlier given up on The Golden Notebook, I trudged through Shikasta, but was not impressed.
Non-fiction
The Aquariums of Pyongyang — Kang Chol-Hwan
The Hare with the Amber Eyes — Edmund de Waal
What If? — Randall Munroe
Mortality — Christopher Hitchens
One Summer: America 1927 — Bill Bryson
I Think You’ll Find It’s a Bit More Complicated Than That — Ben Goldacre
Lingo — Gaston Dorren
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? — Jeanette Winterson
23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism — Ha-Joon Chang
Winterson is brilliant, especially about her mother (“the trouble with a book is, you never know what’s in it until it’s too late”).
Gutenberg
Homer and the Homeric Age — W. E. Gladstone
The History of the Highland Clearances — Alexander Mackenzie
Three Years in Tibet — Ekai Kawaguchi
I finally finished reading Gladstone, though there’s still a map to track down before it can be sent to Project Gutenberg. Kawaguchi’s book, bizarrely published by Annie Besant in Madras, is a fascinating early account of the country, though his occasional claims to have “reached the plane of non-ego” don’t seem to have harmed his opinion of himself.
Children’s
The Little Prince — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Witch Week — Diana Wynne Jones
Kaspar: Prince of Cats — Michael Morpurgo
Gave up on
Dishonourable mention for a couple of books which I couldn’t force down. Coincidentally, both were inept in the same way, indicating that a foreigner was talking by having them say the most basic words in their own language. Annoying, ja?
The Zone of Interest — Martin Amis
Snowdrops — A. D. Miller
I’m not sure whether these are babies, food, or just passing by:
The damselflies could be from space:
And our most co-operative kingfisher yet:
At times when one has cause to doubt Homo sapiens sapiens, it’s good to remember what some more accomplished species can produce. First, a present from the storks:
And from someone smaller, but clearly a dab hand with a beak:
Reptiles are out in force these days; for one reason or another, most of the snakes I’ve seen recently have escaped my lens, but yesterday I got luckier. On top of our Hausberg, I spent some quality time with this gorgeous fellow:
He’s an Aesculapian snake: quite large by European standards (up to two metres), but not venomous. Apparently they can give you a nip if annoyed, though. Here’s part of him, with a water bottle for scale:
These snakes are apparently quite comfortable around people, and this one certainly was. He came and basked a little beside me, then turned round:
and gradually inserted himself into an impossibly tiny crack in a wall:
Once his head was safely inside, I ventured a gently stroke of his tail.
While trying to get far enough away from him to focus, I almost stepped on his friend:
There turned out to be at least three around there, and presumably more, enjoying the sunny hilltop.
Also cute, if not quite so magnificent, was this little lizard — probably a wall lizard, I’m told. These little guys are interesting because they come in six different morphs, which have not only different colours, but different reproduction strategies, differing in territoriality and number of young.
I finished work early today, so I took the opportunity to spend some time on the Morava river. As did this black kite, who also found his dinner there:
From the same spot last week, I saw a couple of white-tailed eagles in the distance: I’m not sure if they were friends or foes: 
The river is also host to our “other” stork family. Sadly no sign of any chicks yet, but the adults take a close interest in visitors: 
