Birds and book, day 186

[emmarytz]

It seems that when the temperature gets to more than 90 degrees, my memory of the day's events completely melts. That's not entirely true, of course, as the rest of this post will demonstrate, but most of the day is sort of blurry. I remember, however, thinking about the scene from Lawrence of Arabia in which Omar Sharif is warning Peter O'Toole about crossing the desert after the sun has risen: "the devil's anvil" it may be called. I was thinking about that scene as I approached the low bridge this morning, because it's a nasty stretch of largely unrelieved sun on a hot day. But it was still earlyish so the concrete wasn't radiating heat and the bridgetender's tower cast a nice bit of shadow. I could have used a shower by the time I drifted into work though.

Birds
American goldfinches
house finches
house sparrows
white-crowned sparrow
bushtits
crows
pigeons
gulls
starlings (?)
robins
swallows (tree, I think)
Canada geese (drifting slowly on the water, taunting me)
great blue heron
pigeon guillemot
northern flicker
black-capped chickadees
ospreys

Book
The Possessed (page 30)--a re-read because hot weather = Russian novel for some of us. I'll never forget reading Crime and Punishment my second or third long, hot summer in the TriCities, seeking out "real trees" to sit in the shade of. Sad, really, the form my youthful rebellion took. (The link is not to my edition/translation but it's tempting...)