Ah, spring.

[conuly]

The flowers are blooming (achoo!), the grass is growing, and little baby birds are dead all over the sidewalks. You know, nobody ever seems to mention that sign of the seasons, but I'm sure it'd make a fine kigo in a haiku.

***********

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Comments

[cosmolinguist]

I'm not convinced anybody has ever actually said any of these

I can't speak for the rest of them, but I promise people really do say "uff-da!" My grandma (who is Norwegian) does, my mom does...you even hear it from local news anchors and that kind of thing. I remember hearing my mom say it on the phone the other day and thinking how much I miss hearing it.

[conuly]

Oh, I read the link yesterday. By today, I forgot uffda was on the list. I knew people said that one. It's all the rest of it I'm not sure about!

[kitcatwoman]

I haven't heard of any of these. I can think of a few phrases that are similar, but that's it.

[cloudsinvenice]

That's a terrific article about the bog bodies - I hadn't realised how many new tests they were able to perform on them...

life & death

[beachglass]

spring is beautiful in many ways :)

[sitonmyinterface]

I don't get dead bird season. What's up with that?

[conuly]

I assume the deceased are from r-strategist species.

[larryhammer]

It would make an excellent kigo.

[conuly]

Not sure how to work it in to a poem, though. I mean, it is an awful lot of syllables in English.

[steorra]

Fallen birdlets

[conuly]

That's a good one.

I go walk the dogs
Fallen birdlets on the ground
No! Drop that! Bad dogs!

[larryhammer]

There are kigo that fill a line. "Fallen baby birds" fits nicely.

[monanotlisa]

Hah! Our cats do away with these...but in Germany I recall dead baby birds. Poor little things.

[conuly]

I know! :(

[pipibluestockin]

Forgotten bike pathways it always amazes me that England has so much history they forget things like this.

[conuly]

Happens in the US too, to be fair.

[smile_n_cuddle]

I used to work downtown and walked to the courthouse almost every day. The sparrows would splat their babies to the ground like some horrific baby slaughter. It was SO disturbing!!!!

[conuly]

I'll bet!

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

and little baby birds are dead all over the sidewalks. You know, nobody ever seems to mention that sign of the seasons, but I'm sure it'd make a fine kigo in a haiku.

I have honestly never seen that in my life! We rarely find lost eggs, somewhat more commonly find eggshells, and very occasionally find fledglings that have to be rescued from the cats... but dead baby birds all over the sidewalks are complete news to me! Are there so many cuckoos in NYC? Or how does it happen? And why doesn't it happen here? (Well, perhaps it does, and they just get eaten by cats, foxes, martens, squirrels or the like before I see them. But it sounds like they drop in such great numbers that some would still be left by morning!)
So maybe "nobody" mentions that sign of the season because it isn't actually a visible phenomenon in rural places? No idea!

[conuly]

I've seen four or five in the past week alone. Mostly almost completely unformed still, but the last one had feathers growing in, poor thing.

No cuckoos in NYC - or in America at all! I mean, we have members of the cuckoo family - the roadrunner is one - but they don't practice brood parasitism. We do have brood parasites in the US, but I'm not sure we have that many in NYC. I don't know how these birdies end up on the ground.

[conuly]

Hah, the very day we had this conversation there was a dead baby bird between my house and next door, in the alleyway. It was gone the next day, so maybe a cat or possum or raccoon ate it.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Umm... I say "Uff da!"; it's a common expression in Poulsbo, WA, where I lived for a number of years.

[conuly]

Ah, I had this convo on DW as well. I'd forgotten uff da was on the list when I posted it - that's the only one I know for sure people really say in real life!

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Awell, there ya go. I also say 'boy howdy' and 'ja sure you betcha'- my friend who grew up in Minnesota says them too. Apparently they're common Northern Fly-over expressions from the middle of the last century. I've lived a lot of different places, though, and I pick up idioms the way furs pick up burrs, so I think even the great 'enry 'iggins would find it problematic to suss out my idiosyncratic speech-patterns and Uncanny Valley accent.

Yo, it occurs to me to ask: have you lived in NYC all your life? Do people ask you if you're some different nationality? and if they do, do you think you sound like the nationality they suppose you to be?

[conuly]

1. Since I was three - and my mother grew up here.

2. YES OMG, though the effect lessens the further away from NYC I get. I once had somebody run through a whole litany of places, starting with England and ending with South Africa, and then, when told I grew up in Brooklyn, he asked "really?"

No, I just like shitting you.

2a. My mother has the same problem. And I'm thinking you too? I've heard similar reports from other autistics. (Not that my mother IS autistic, but if she isn't part of the broader phenotype I'll buy a hat just for the joy of eating it.)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, me too, ever since childhood, and my daughter also. People ask me if I'm British; when she was in London the Brits kept asking her if she was Irish. I've surmised it might be because we use correct grammar and enunciate our words, but even so, to my ear neither of us sound like anything but 100% American.

[conuly]

I just posted a new entry which I'm sure you'll see, but it is a well-known thing. Well, I've known it was widespread among autistics for just over a decade, looks like the literature is a bit behind that. (When is it ever not!?) "Developmental foreign accent syndrome".

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Nice to see that at least they acknowledge that it doesn't mean brain damage (https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17246-foreign-accent-syndrome-doesnt-mean-brain-damage/).

I attribute the trait to two factors: Aspie literality, and Aspie chameleonism. I think I sound 'British' to a non-Brit ear because I enunciate all the consonants in words, but it's also true that I very easily pick up idiosyncratic speech from others - for instance, I still sometimes pronounce metal as me'al (silent t) because my friend in middle school pronounced it so.

One might well ask to what extent this trait correlates with special interests in literature and language, and/or super-powers in language acquisition, translating and editing.