Tag: ryan h

HEAD MOVEMENTS OF A SIX-NOTE COO CALL

Martha Whitson, “Courtship Behavior of the Greater Roadrunner,” inThe Living Bird Fourteenth Annual of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology,Douglas A. Lancaster, ed., 1975

Each drawing represents the production of one note. The solid line depicts the head just before the note begins and the dotten line depicts the head’s position at the end of the note. The solid horizontal lines serve as reference points to note the slight head lowering with each of the early notes.

The little sparrows
Hop ingenuously
About the pavement
Quarreling
With sharp voices
Over those things
That interest them.
But we who are wiser
Shut ourselves in
On either hand
And no one knows
Whether we think good
Or evil.
                   Then again,
The old man who goes about
Gathering dog lime
Walks in the gutter
Without looking up
And his tread
Is more majestic than
That of the Episcopal minister
Approaching the pulpit
Of a Sunday.
These things
Astonish me beyond words.

– William Carlos Williams, “Pastoral”