Rather a good thread going on BIRDCHAT about the decline of House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) in the U.K. Apparently the bird's failure to double- and triple-brood in Britain, part of its historical range, is causing it to fall behind in the ecological race. No failures to triple-brood around here, as far as I can tell.

Richard and Jean Gregson write:

[North American] cities also, often, have a very rural countryside nearby to act as a bird reservoir while in the UK land near cities is often very intensively farmed indeed without the forests we have here. The pretty pictures of English countryside seen in the travel books show a vanishing countryside only found in the tourist regions like the Cotswolds and many farmers have spent years ripping out hedgerows to enlarge their fields with obvious effects.

posted: 1:59:13 PM  

I'm in the Fox Mill Giant Food buying groceries for the week. Not much in the trolley, I'm not going to be home for dinner much. Back by the bread and hot deli, I notice the muzak. This is almost never a good thing.

It's an instrumental of Carly Simon's "Loving You's the Right Thing to Do." Now, consider the message of this song, which is, in my bald paraphrase, "you're already on my couch so I might as well schtupp you." I'm not sure that the more family-oriented shoppers in this establishment would subscribe to this value. But as muzak goes, it's run of the mill.

And then, over in the frozen yogurt, lightning strikes. I hear a song written by Jerry Ragonov Ragovoy and Bert Berns, and sung, when she was part of Big Brother and the Holding Company, by Janis Joplin: "Piece of My Heart." Janis's expressionistic vocals, full of life and pain and dynamics, had been obliterated, replaced by a hack's twangy electric guitar. A four-minute sliver of music history, now background music for soccer moms, it's nearly as bad as the chirpy cover version emitted by Faith Hill, back before she was Faith Hill. A Fairfax County cop is buying nectarines and a soda. I want to yell at him, "Officer, a crime is being committed here! Can you not hear it? Find someone to arrest!"

But I don't. I queue up at the checkstand.

Order is soon restored. The next song is a tinkly piano picking out the melody line of Elton John's "Daniel." Now that's muzak.

posted: 1:50:24 PM