Freud, Leonardo and the fork-tailed M40 birds

A note for the end of this 'red kite week'.

The birds of the Chiltern hills have, I discover, their own websites, a multiplicity of sites.

And a fascinating new book has arrrived at the TLS from Princeton.

Birdscapes, by the former Cambridge University Press boss, Jeremy Mynott, seems to have a good deal to say about kites.

I have only an index-less proof copy but, without too much trouble, I've found accounts of Leonardo da Vinci's obsession with fork-tailed birds, swallows as well as kites.

Leonardo, it is claimed, had homosexual fantasies about a bird from his childhood that was a kite - although Freud saw it as a vulture.

Mynott wonders whether in future, now that kites can be seen from the M40, he will care less about them, despite their colour, their aerial magic, their past associations and persecution.

He considers the idea of 'charisma' in birds, why some are celebrities and some are not, and how that status changes.

I did not know that our common magpie is a rarity on the Scilly Islands - and is much sought by 'birders' there. Mynott comments on the 'birders' word too and why 'twitchers' and 'birdwatchers' are different.

I'll try to finish Birdscapes in Berkshire over the weekend - if lorry crashes and kite-watching don't detain me on the motorway too much.

Comments

[Dion Per Sona]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=WxUcJdIvoR4&feature=related

[Dion Per Sona]

Moreover:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg173VXc2Kk&feature=related

[Peter Hughes]

I don't think Leonardo had homosexual fantasies about a kite. He recalled a kite's tail vibrating against his lips in his cot. Given his subsequent obsession with flight, I'd say the experience was more numinous than sexual - a frisson of connectedness with the sky.