Philip Philtrum
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justfolk.bsky.social
Philip Philtrum
@justfolk.bsky.social
95 followers 100 following 120 posts
Leftist, anti-imperialist, eco-socialist. An academic until 2017, I'm still a folklorist & linguist but I like more to dig holes for plants now. I take pictures a lot, very often of birds. I listen to shortwave radio. I curse politicians. Don't you?
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justfolk.bsky.social
It was warm enough in the sun this morning that the neighbourhood house flies were woken up and called to service. The orange is there in hopes of drawing in some fruit-eating birds. None has been seen yet this year but my fingers are crossed. Meantime, I am amused by the Musca.

#flies #Insects
We had a Baltimore oriole a couple of years ago at an orange like this. I live in hopes. --------- 25N32-337-1b
November 21, 2025 at 12:52 AM
justfolk.bsky.social
What I think was a merlin came darting around our yard this morning and all the smaller birds went to ground. The merlin stayed less than five seconds and was gone, looking for better pickings. Our place stayed quiet for a while and slowly the little birds re-appeared.

#Birds #BirdPhotography
After about a half-hour the chickadees and goldfinches had been out a while and, finally, our nuthatch ventured out. He sat in this bush by the back deck for a few minutes before he went to the feeder.
November 18, 2025 at 6:49 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
Everyone noticed. . .
We've had a lot of dirty, dark, wet weather the past week or two. And this morning was one of those seven-or-eight-stops-down-from-sunny days. The kind that make you turn on all the lights in the house even at eleven a.m. Dark dark. So when, mid-afternoon, the sun burst out and made a brilliant double rainbow across the city, everyone was taken by it. Rapt. I was driving and when we stopped at a traffic light I took a couple of grab shots. I was lucky; it was gone in five minutes. But as we drove home from shopping we saw at least a dozen people pointing, staring, or taking pictures of it. When we got home, I put a picture on my social media page. In a few minutes I saw about fifty more pictures. All hands saying it was the best rainbow they'd ever seen. Small things make us all happier. ---------------- 25N27-341-1a
November 17, 2025 at 11:52 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
Today's special guest in the apple tree, a Purple finch, though not a purple one since the Fringilline Sumptuary Law allows only the adult males to wear the purple.

#Birds #BirdPhotography #PurpleFinch
It's the law, luh. ------------------- 25N26-265aa
November 17, 2025 at 4:59 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
There's not much of a room, but I think the nuthatch likes the board.

#Birds #BirdPhotography #BirdsEating
-------------- 25N23-239aa
November 16, 2025 at 7:02 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
Sunny afternoon. Goldfinch at the beach.

#Birds #BirdPhotography #AmericanGoldfinch
In our backyard, downtown St. John's, Newfoundland. ------------------ 25N19-194a
November 15, 2025 at 7:09 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
The lovely Chickadee, the Tom-tit as it used to be known here in Newfoundland (being a close relative to the European tits), gets fairly short shrift from me since I see and hear the neighbourhood ones every day. "Nutten special 'bout the Tom-tits. . . ."

#Birds #BirdPhotography #Names #Words
So, here: a picture of one of our Tom-tits. Our special Tom-tits. [If you're so inclined, you may now start singing your favourite song from The Mikado, but I've never heard one of ours singing for seeming lack of intellect nor apparent wormic indigestion.]
November 14, 2025 at 1:33 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
Crows. Peanuts.

#Birds! #BirdsEating
November 13, 2025 at 8:47 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
Our new friend, a Red-breasted nuthatch that showed up yesterday, is settling in to our neighbourhood. He was back and forth to the feeder today for a couple of hours, mixing well with the local chickadees.

#Birds #BirdPhotography #BirdFeeding #BirdFeeder
Downtown St. John's, Newfoundland, 10/11/25.
November 10, 2025 at 11:20 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
I had not seen a nuthatch in six months in our yard. But a couple of days ago a friend who lives a km up the street told me she'd seen one in her yard that day. I kept an eye out and this morning (9/11/25) this fellow came around.

#Birds #BirdPhotography
Red-breasted nuthatch, probably male, in St. John's, Newfoundland. ------------- 25N8-006aa
November 10, 2025 at 1:30 AM
justfolk.bsky.social
For a half-dozen years, Canada has very sensibly allowed its citizens to grow cannabis. Some growers are failures (like me). But others are excellent husbanders of weed seeds.

Here is part of a friend's crop this year. I don't partake but I love the smell of it, and this sure smelt good.

#weed
November 7, 2025 at 9:02 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
Moon yesterday afternoon as the sun set nearly opposite it.

#moon #moonrise #MoonriseOverBirches
------------- 25N3-722-2
November 4, 2025 at 6:44 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
The flicker was hunting for peanuts hidden by the blue jays in the pot my forty-year-old pet pine grows in. The sun was shining directly on the glass of the window I was stealing views through, so there was pretty substantial flare.

#Birds #NorthernFlicker #SheBird
--------------------- 25O49-553-1
November 2, 2025 at 1:16 AM
justfolk.bsky.social
The first arrivals, candy-beggars at Hallowe'en 2025.

#Hallowe'en #Vampires #Halloween
Three trick-or-treaters at my door; one of their adults can be seen behind the smallest of the three. ------------------- 25O53-307dsta
November 1, 2025 at 7:20 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
November 1, 2025 at 7:15 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
Twa corbies. Preening. Or conspiring.

#Birds #Crows #AmericanCrows
Two crows overhead in a European white poplar. One crow is picking at the other's neck. The picker is leaned right into the pickee who is leaned well back. --------- 25O46-419aa
October 28, 2025 at 5:34 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
Night sky from our back door a week or two ago. Tarted up.

#NightSky #SkyPhotography #stars #satellites #FallColours #AutumnSky
I was puzzling over how to produce pictures like so many people post to web sites these days -- super bright pictures of landscapes, even of night skies. They are all the rage. I suspect people use ready-made special effects inside their cameras (or telephones). I don't like those ready-mades myself, so I thought I'd try to do something a little simpler for me, and more controlled. I took this picture a couple of weeks ago from our deck, looking up at the WNW sky. Although it was a thirty-second exposure, it was still under-exposed, and thus flat and noisy. I tried mucking around with it, but without ready-made effects. Instead I did the old-fashioned darkroom stuff, mostly just burning and dodging. However, at the end, the noisy bits had clearly had a mind of their own through my processing and they needed much selective desaturation, which I judiciously applied. When I took the picture, it was close to pitch dark out with some light leaking out a window, and from some solar lights, all just out of the frame. The three lines in the sky, two long in one direction and one short in another, are satellites moving through the scene. The picture is pretty shaky (a deck moves a lot in thirty seconds), but it's a not-bad facsimile of at least some special effects residing in modern cameras. ------------------- [25O25-160 -1bb]
October 26, 2025 at 4:17 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
My anthropomorphistic pondering of seemingly gratuitous violence among ants.

See the "Alt Text."
Listen. I don't understand bullying and violence in the *human* world. I have even *less* understanding of the non-human social worlds. Like here, today: The red ants were all frenzied wandering around the stones that make up the steps to our backyard. A few of the wingèd black ants were landing like paratroopers among them. The red ants, if they were close by, would turn on them, but the wingèd black ants would consistently get the better of them. A few red ants would approach the fight, maybe thinking they should help out, and the red ant under the black one might get away as a result. Over and over. Just weird. They were all tiny, like 6 or 7 mm long, and my camera wasn't doing a good job of locking onto their focus. But it was enough to ponder, anthropomorphically, what seemed like gratuitous violence. ____________________________ [Grey stone surface with thin focus band across the frame. A black ant with wings is on top of a red ant and seems to be winning a punch-'em-up fight. A second red ant is off to the right and more or less out of focus.]
August 19, 2025 at 12:08 AM
justfolk.bsky.social
All along the no-longer-a-railway-track by the river four or five minutes' walk from our house today, there were plenty of European skippers, egging on grasses and dining on all the other flowers that are out.
The grasses are all flowering or even going to seed now and the European skippers, who lay their eggs on them, are all very well pleased. Along the no-longer-a-railway track by the river walking distance from our house today, there were plenty of them about, dining on all the other flowers that are out. I think this is some kind of ragwort, one of the mid- and late-summer yellow flowers I used to just group together as goldenrod. (Goldenrod it ain't.) And the skippers are thick into them.
July 25, 2025 at 10:14 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
We stopt mowing the grassy verge between our driveway and the next-door neighbour's driveway a few years ago (when it became apparent we owned the entire verge). It is only two metres wide and maybe five metres long, but it has an abundance of wild and feral plants; today's best is St.John's wort.
July 13, 2025 at 4:21 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
An unexpected pop-up behind my garlic patch, a big pink Allium giganteum. It was sent unordered last fall by the company we buy garlic etc from, and when it first showed this spring, I had forgotten about it, even that I'd planted it. It remains a surprise when I see its bloom, now 20cm across.
July 12, 2025 at 12:54 AM
justfolk.bsky.social
A shot of a white clover coming up in a disused flower box outside my kitchen door today.

The needly stuff is my Pet Pine which grows in another pot and is about as tall as I am. I grew it (Pet Pine) from a seed about forty years ago. Someday I may put it in the ground.
July 8, 2025 at 12:36 AM
justfolk.bsky.social
I was thinking about lunch and so was this guy just outside my window. After a minute perusing the menu, he made a dive and then a swirly chase, but he left the area without anything on his plate.

I think he's a Sharp-shinned hawk, and the brownish colour is due to his youth.

#birds
#raptors
Standing on a thick cable of telephone wires, a hawk, brown on top and white on bottom, with bright orange legs and talons. He has darker orange eyes and a pale-ish yellow spot on the bridge of his, uhhh, nose. His head is turned enough that the hook in his bill is visible. | In our backyard in downtown St. John's, Newfoundland, today, 25/3/25. ----------- [25333-924-aa]
March 25, 2025 at 3:33 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
Not in our yard, nor in your yard, but in a yard three doors away, the flickers were playing the ancient game of Show Me Yours -- I'll Show You Mine.

#birds
#Courtship
Two colourful birds, Northern flickers, facing off in the air between trunks and tree branches, showing the bright yellow, black and white of their undersides, and the bright red mark behind the head of the nearer bird. Courtship behaviour.
March 24, 2025 at 2:39 PM
justfolk.bsky.social
I've known Alan for fifteen years or more. He used to do some odd-jobbing in our neighbourhood. He does less of that these days so I see less of him nowadays but we always have a conversation when I see him in the street. And sometimes I take his picture.

#panhandler
#GreatBeard
Black and white picture of a man in an open, but warm jacket with the hood up over his cap, sitting on a plastic crate on a sidewalk. He has a long, triangular, white beard, well-combed out.
March 22, 2025 at 5:03 PM