Nodding Ducks

Last weekend Zoe and I saw a pair of ducks on the Kennet that were systematically nodding at each other.  The pair consisted of a male and a female mallard so I assume that this was some form of courting ritual.  One would bob its head a few times then the other would do it in return.  It was quite striking to watch, but we couldn't stay long as we were in a hurry to get home.

Update on Sun 2005-11-20 by Tristram Brelstaff

I saw what was probably the same pair nodding at each other again on two occasions over the following week.  I am fairly sure that the nodding was not just them scooping up and eating the small bit of leaves that float down the river.  The scooping is more of a foward and backward motion while the nodding is definitely up and down.

The Best Software Writing selected and introduced by Joel Spolsky

A collection of articles on software development culled from various sources on the web.  Very similar in scope to 'Joel on Software' but here Joel only writes the introductions, so it tends to be a bit more fragmented.  However, it is still good fun to read.

Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges

The most complete collection of Borges' short stories available in English is this set of translations by Andrew Hurley published by Penguin in 1998.  It includes all the stories in Labyrinths and The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory,  but there about the same amount again of material that was new to me.  A lot of this 'new' material is set in the macho knife-fighting gaucho culture of Argentina in the late 19th and early 20th Century, wonderfully atmospheric, and quite violent at times.

Birds and Railway Stations

While waiting for trains on my way to and from work I often notice birds and each station seems to have its own characteristic species:

• Reading - pigeons
• Ascot - pied wagtails, carrion crows and gulls
• Frimley - magpies
• Farnborough North -  robins and Canada geese

The carrion crows and gulls at Ascot are apparently attracted by the dog-meat rendering establishment next to the station there.  The smell from this place used to attract so many birds that the owners used to play a tape of gull distress calls over a loud speaker in an attempt to scare them off.  However, this didn't seem very effective and I haven't heard the tape being played for quite a while now.

At Farnborough North I was once spattered with droppings by a flock of Canada geese flying up from the nearby lake.  Now, when I am there, I keep an eye open for low flying geese and move along the platform if it looks as if I am going to under their flight path. 

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

A collection of short stories written by the American horror writer between 1917 and 1935.  If I had looked through the first couple of stories in the shop, I probably wouldn't have bought this book.  They were rather cliched and flat, nowhere near as interesting as Borges or as scary as de Maupassant.  However, the later stories were a bit better.  I most enjoyed the Rats in the Walls and the longish Shadow over Innsmouth.  The stories were probably weird when they were written but now they just seem like the plots of bad movies.