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Category: photographs

Narcissistic duck? (#80 in “a shining moment” series)

Anthropomorphic captions almost always lie about the animals they purport to describe!

This juvenile Australian Wood Duck was simply preening, as birds do.

This behaviour has precisely nothing to do with egregious self-regard.

However, the “water as mirror” circumstance does lead me to one of my favourite pianists, delivering a sublime rendition – coughers, notwithstanding – of Claude Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau.

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Fuller version of “Big Spit: full Monty”

If the featured image’s swan had nested at this location a couple of decades earlier,  he/she (black swans share nesting/parenting duties) would have almost been “living next door to Alan”.

Alan Bond – criminal/America’s Cup “hero” – is no more, but “his” Victoria Avenue mansion recently sold for multiple millions, and is part of the featured image’s “millionaire’s row”.

This post is best read after first seeing the immediately preceding one.

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Red pandas (#3 in Sichuan series)

Red Pandas are their genus’s only (two) species; further, they are the only living members of their family, Ailuridae.

They are only very distantly related to Giant Pandas.

Giant Pandas are bears, members of the Ursidae family.

Red Pandas are more closely related to weasels, skunks and raccoons, as fellow members of the superfamily, Musteloidea.

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Revelatory covers (15th in series): “Oblivion”, twice

 

Oblivion is a 1982 composition by Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992), Nuevo tango’s pre-eminent composer and bandoneon virtuoso.

Perhaps his most uncanny piece, it has survived/endured countless covers.

Some of its finest interpreters are not Argentinian, and although one of this post’s two very different versions does feature a “squeezebox”, it is not a bandoneon.

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A walk on the walled side (#3 in Western India series)

 

This post is the fruit of a lunchtime walk through the walled, “old city” section of Jaipur, Rajasthan’s largest city.

Approaching four million people, its metropolis has around twice as many residents as Perth’s.

Its “old” part’s hub makes any part of Perth – or of most “Western World” city CBDs – feel relatively monochrome, lifeless.

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