It's raining cats and dogs

Yes. it is. But in May it's nothing extraordinary. If you haven't heard this expression yet, maybe you start to wonder: "raining cats and dogs"? Yup, it means it's raining very heavily. There are lots of other idioms that use animals. Take for instance, the expression: paper tiger. It is used quite often and it refers to something or someone that seems more powerful or dangerous than it actually is. Or when you hear a story that is suspicious you may smell a rat. Here is a quiz I made last week for my students. It is about animals used in idiomatic expressions. Check how many of them you can get right. (When you have finished the quiz all your answers will be highlighted and you can read or click on the 'Explanation' after some of the difficult questions.)

English idioms with animals » make online tests

The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles

This is gonna be weird stuff. The progressive rock band, Jethro Tull, made a song in 1973, titled 'The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles'. This is a strange little story of forest animals trying to help an unfortunate hare to find a pair of lost glasses (the word 'spectacles' means glasses, a fact that the other animals don't seem to know). The whole thing is bizarre, yet funny and fully comprehensible with a solid upper-intermediate knowledge of English (well, apart from a few words that you can easily look up in a dictionary; you can find the whole script under the video box). Try to concentrate on the play on words. The video in the youtube video box is an animated film made for the original piece of music. If you are brave enough to see the really crazy original clip, click here. Enjoy!




Owl loved to rest quietly whilst no one was watching. Sitting on a
fence one day, he was surprised when suddenly a kangaroo ran close
by.
Now this may not seem strange, but when Owl overheard Kangaroo whisper
to no one in particular, ``The hare has lost his spectacles,'' well, he
began to wonder.
Presently, the moon appeared from behind a cloud and there, lying on
the grass was hare. In the stream that flowed by the grass -- a
newt. And sitting astride a twig of a bush -- a bee.
Ostensibly motionless, the hare was trembling with excitement, for
without his spectacles he was completely helpless. Where were his
spectacles? Could someone have stolen them? Had he mislaid them? What
was he to do?
Bee wanted to help, and thinking he had the answer began: ``You
probably ate them thinking they were a carrot.''
``No!'' interrupted Owl, who was wise. ``I have good eye-sight, insight,
and foresight. How could an intelligent hare make such a silly
mistake?'' But all this time, Owl had been sitting on the fence,
scowling!
Kangaroo were hopping mad at this sort of talk. She thought herself
far superior in intelligence to the others. She was their leader;
their guru. She had the answer: ``Hare, you must go in search of the
optician.''
But then she realized that Hare was completely helpless without his
spectacles. And so, Kangaroo loudly proclaimed, ``I can't send Hare in
search of anything!''
``You can guru, you can!'' shouted Newt. ``You can send him with Owl.''
But Owl had gone to sleep. Newt knew too much to be stopped by so
small a problem -- ``You can take him in your pouch.'' But alas, Hare
was much too big to fit into Kangaroo's pouch.
All this time, it had been quite plain to hare that the others knew
nothing about spectacles.
As for all their tempting ideas, well Hare didn't care.
The lost spectacles were his own affair.
And after all, Hare did have a spare a-pair.
A-pair.

An afternoon at the river

There is a place near my home that I like a lot. It is called Hárosi-öböl in Hungarian. 'Háros' is the name of a suburb of Budapest and 'öböl' means bay, which is misleading as it is an oxbow lake of the River Danube, only it is not closed because the lower(downstream) end of it is open so it has a live connection with the river. Anyway, the place is beautiful and has a varied vegetation and wildlife; part of the area (the island within the lake and the peninsula that divides it from the river) is a nature reserve. I usually go fishing to the bay but last Saturday I borrowed a good camera and went there to take some pictures.




















This is the island within the bay. It is rumoured that there are some ruins of a medieval monastery on it. The island is home to many wild birds: pheasants, starks, herons, ducks, woodpeckers and lots of other species. The vegetation is also very unique: the native trees that are typical of these flooded areas are totally overgrown with fox grape and sometimes the tree looks as if it wore a veil of grapes.




















Something similar to this only much much denser. I took this picture from the 'mainland' where the grapes are not nearly as lush and dense as on the island.




















Having approached the water I took about ten pictures of this unlucky moth, hoping to catch the moment when a fish swallows it. The fish were probably watching from below and only attacked the prey when I had stopped clicking like mad.




















The duck is swimming home. (that's my impression, anyway) They were grazing in the shallows during the early afternoon and took to the deeper parts towards sundown.



















The bushes are home to other animals too. This pup and its mum, who turned up a second later (only to kick over my most important work tool - the beer can), are probably stray dogs and should not have been there at all. But they were really cute.




















Just before I left there I noticed this heron standing by the water. It was too far away and a real photographer could have captured it much better but I still like this picture because of its atmosphere and the late afternoon colours. Next time I should rent a boat, maybe.




















The last "person" I met in the bay was one of the cats who live there and hang around the anglers in hope of getting a few small fish for dinner (usually not in vain). Whiskers' eyes seem to be saying: "Ok, you can go home now, but if I see you around without the fish bucket again there will be trouble."

Watch videos with subtitles - Einstein the parrot

There are tons of video sharing sites on the web. Some of them are even designed for language learning and sometimes they provide subtitles too. I have tried and become slightly disappointed with most of them for one reason or the other. Some have bad quality videos, some have only 'funny' vids with people falling flat on their faces, on others the subtitles don't really match the actual script and so on. The best that I have found so far - is Ted . (many thanks to Learn English Online for the info)

Ted has more than 450 videos of talks and performances in many different topics. Both the sound and the picture quality are excellent and ALL videos come with at least an English subtitle that matches the video script as closely as possible. Some of them have subtitles in several other languages as well.
If you take the plunge I suggest that you pick from one of these categories first:

Most favorited all time
Rated jaw-dropping (meaning that you will be so amazed that your jaw will 'drop')
... funny

You can select the category from the left side bar next to the videos. Once you have made your choice and have started to watch your first video try to resist the temptation to click on the subtitle box. Keep that for later so you can check how much of it you can understand without the subtitles. The video I have chosen as a sample is 'Talking and Squaking with Einstein and Stephanie White'.

Danger - Crocodiles!

(Words in purple are linked to language notes)

Last week while I was looking for pictures for the Dreamtime post I found a warning sign that I liked a lot but had to leave out because it wouldn't have fitted that topic at all. I'll post it now. Would you ever go for a swim in a lake or river if you saw this sign next to it?
























No swimming sign in the Kakadu National Park (picture from here)

I'm sure I wouldn't. In fact, I don't think I would go anywhere near the water there. Despite the straightforwardness and obvious usefulness of these signs some people thought that they could be replaced by less sinister warnings. At FreakingNews.com a photoshop contest was organized for the most creative 'Croc-sign' makers. While I don't think it is a good idea to make the danger seem trivial, I had a really good laugh watching some of the ideas the contestants came up with. Take a look at these.
























Attention! Rock-Crocks ahead! Drive carefully.








If you throw things in 'you will be asked to retrieve them' , meaning you will have to swim in to take those things out. I no longer wonder why Australia has so many excellent swimmers and so many gold winners at the Olympics.





This last one is a bit of an odd-one-out. It warns you that there is actually no danger of crocs. (Mind you, that huge frozen 'shark-fin' does look a bit alarming, though:)
Are there any signs that warn you about dangerous animals where you live? Are any of those remarkable or even funny?

Nightingale

Last night I was crossing a park on my way home when I heard a bird singing so loudly that I could hear it through the music going on in my mp3 player. It was a kind of staccato birdsong with lots of high-pitched trills and it was simply mesmerizing. Besides the beautiful and clear melody it was the element of surprise that made me stop: you just wouldn't expect a bird to sing like that at 1:30 am. I listened to it for a while and when I left there the bird was still performing and the sounds of the song were reverberating from the nearby houses.
This afternoon, I have had some time to do a bit of research on the net and the mysterious night singer seems to have been a nightingale. It is a migratory species breeding in forest and scrub in Europe and south-west Asia. Nightingales are named so because they frequently sing at night as well as during the day. The song is impressive with a lot of whistles and trills and it is even louder near urban areas because the bird wants to overcome the background noises. (from wikipedia)
Nightingales are not very rare and they mainly sing in spring, so if you happen to walk in forests or parks these days at the nighttime, you are likely to hear them. It is a memorable experience.
This bird is the focus of many works of art: songs, poems, myths and short stories. Listen to this soulful jazzy tune by Norah Jones, titled "Nightingale":






Read the lyrics of the song.

Do some vocabulary exercises about the language content of this post.

Flying / Birds

At the end of the last entry, we left off with planes gliding in the air and let's stay up in the air for a while. 'Flight' has a very complex and tricky definition on wikipedia. My definition is easier: If something is in the air for a long time and it isn't tied to a tree or something then it is very probably flying. Take birds, for instance. Most birds can fly, as we all know. They are usually light and they have wings with feathers. Their wings evolved in a way so that they can create a so called 'lift'. Take a look at the picture to understand it better.















As you can see, the wings have a curve in them so that the air flow above the wings has to travel farther than the air under the wing to get to the end of the wing at the same time. This means that the air above the wing moves faster and this reduces the pressure there. As air has a tendency to move to lower pressure areas, an upward force (lift) is created. Of course, speed is a very important factor here. In order to increase the air speed around the curve, birds flap their wings. However, wings and feathers are not all that you need for flying. Basically, everything about the bird anatomy supports flying in one way or another. Their bones are light, their ears have special balancing capabilities and their feet are perfect landing gears. Some birds can (or rather have to) take up to 50 times as much food than a non-flying animal of the same body weight. They have to do this to provide the immense energy that is needed for climbing against gravity.

Albatrosses are among the largest of flying birds. The great albatross can have a wingspan of over 3 meters. With these huge wings, they are very well designed for gliding in the air. They can travel over incredible distances but as the next funny video shows they tend to have some serious difficulties during take-off and landing.




Now, let's take a look at some bird champions and some interesting facts about birds! The fastest bird (and also the fastest animal) is the peregrine falcon, which can reach flying speeds of about 110 km/h. But that's not all. When this bird is diving to catch a prey, it can accelerate to an incredible 300 km/h. The dive can start from the height of 1 km. This feat would be quite useless without actually seeing the prey from such a distance. The falcon's eyesight is also very special. In clean air, it can spot a pigeon from five kilometers. Although it is the most efficient of all the predators, it is endangered because of the use of pesticides.


















To tell you the truth, at first I didn't believe the story about the speed of this bird. After watching this video, the whole thing sounds a lot more credible.

The wandering albatross has the largest wingspan of any living bird. Some male birds have a 340 cm wide wingspan. It is such an excellent glider that it can sleep while it flies!













The smallest bird is the bee hummingbird, which lives in Cuba. It is about 5 centimeters long and weighs only 1.8 grams. Hummingbirds flap their wings up to 80 times a second. This enables them to hover in the air and even to fly backwards. No other bird can do this. To provide enough energy for such rapid beating of their wings, these birds typically consume more than their own weight in nectar each day. Watch this video about the flight technique of these little jewels.


















The bird with the longest recorded flight is the common tern. A tern that was banded (marked with a little plastic band) in June 1996 in Finland was recaptured alive 16,250 miles away at Rotamah Island, Victoria, Australia in January 1997. It had traveled at a rate of 125 miles a day.












The bird with the largest field of vision is the woodcock. Its eyes are set so far back in its head that it has a 360 degree field of vision, enabling it to see all round and even over the top of its head. If you look at the picture below you can observe the position of the eyes. If it wasn't for the long beak you would think the bird is flying upside down.













The bar-headed goose is one of the world's highest flying birds, having been seen at up to 10175 m. (That is much higher than the peak of Mt. Everest!) It has a slightly larger wing area for its weight than other geese and it is believed this helps the goose to fly high. Studies have found that they breathe more efficiently under low oxygen conditions and are able to reduce heat loss.














See if you can do these exercises about the language content of this entry.

You can read some interesting and useful idioms in connection with the word 'bird' here.