Alexandersmap

    Tag: The New York Times

    • Solving the Wren Riddle

      I was clearly wrong. My educated guess was off the mark. My attempts at online research failed. Apps I trusted to point me in the right direction flopped. So it goes.

      I’ve written about my attempts to identify a bird I wasn’t familiar with that has moved into the neighborhood. And not just this neighborhood but I’ve heard a similar song on Cape Cod, as if it was following me across the Bourne Bridge, taunting me all along.  After many fruitless searches I’d finally settled on the Brown Thrasher as the most likely candidate, and have referred to the Brown Thrasher ever since.  But it wasn’t a Brown Thrasher at all.  It was a Carolina Wren.

      The Carolina Wren, as the name indicates, is typically seen (and heard) further south of here.  I’ve seen another “southern bird”‘, the Baltimore Oriole, in Massachusetts and New Hamphire, but this was a new song; a song I couldn’t get out of my head until I solved the riddle.  An app that records birds singing and analyzes it like Shazam continually got the wrong answers.  So I tried a different app, and still continually got the wrong answers.  Frustrated, I emailed the .m4a voice file to Chirp, the second app I tried, and they responded within 24 hours with the elusive answer; Carolina Wren.  A quick search online confirmed this was indeed the singer I’d been searching for all season.  It seems the bird song apps use a strong location filter to eliminate matches that wouldn’t normally be found in your area.  And Carolina Wren’s weren’t thought to settle in New Hampshire so Chirp was eliminating it as a choice.  Well, welcome to the Granite State, my southern friend.

      The New York Times recently published an article detailing the decline of North American birds, and followed that with an article detailing birds moving away from natural territory as the climate changes.  New Hampshire’s Purple Finch is apparently considering a move to other climates.  Thankfully the one’s who visit my backyard haven’t felt so inclined as of yet.  But then again, I have this new visitor to my backyard whom I’ve never had before who might be singing that there’s something to this story after all.

      Carolina Wren teasing me with her song, July 2019

    • Pass the Flowing Bowl

      When Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys helped Benedict Arnold seize Fort Ticonderoga, they apparently wanted to celebrate the occasion.  In 1775 these two men, who couldn’t be more different, led the attack on the lightly defended fort, winning it without a fight.  British soldiers stations there hadn’t heard about Lexington and Concord yet, and had no idea that they might be attacked by people who were supposed to be loyal to the crown.  For the Green Mountain Boys, the best way to celebrate was to pass the flowing bowl around.  The bowl was usually filled with punch.

      The recipe for punch varied from place to place across the globe, but in the American Colonies it called for rum.  Punch rivaled ale and flip in popularity, and in some colonies exceeded it.  Punch had an added benefit over Flip or ale in that it helped introduce fruits and juices into the diet of colonists, which certainly improved their overall health (rum aside) and fending off scurvy.Wayne Curtis in And a Bottle of Rum referenced a recipe for Planters Punch that was published in The New York Times in 1908 in the form of a ditty:

      “This recipe I give to thee,
      Dear brother in the heat.
      Take two of sour (lime let it be)
      To one and a half sweet.
      Of Old Jamaica pour thee three strong,
      And add four parts of weak.
      Then mix and drink “I do no wrong – 
      I know whereof I speak.”

      Back in my college days, I thought I’d be clever and mix up a batch of punch for a party.  Not being an expert in the art of mixology, I was pretty aggressive in my pours, adding several spirits into a bowl and adding Hawaiian Punch or something like it.  After celebrating a bit too much with this concoction, the night took a turn for the worse.  It was the first and last time I’ve ever made punch.