Stuff And Nonsense From Literary License

This morning as I awoke, a word started playing around in my head, "billitu". After a while I was able to pin down where I had run into the word. It was used in "The Blue Sword" written by Robin McKinley and was defined in that story as a woman lover. It was used in jest towards an older warrior who complimented one of the female warriors.

Anyway, I couldn't get the damn thing out of my head, so I went to Encarta to check it out. No such word, I am told. Just because I felt like it, I Goggled the word and actually got a couple of hits on the same spelling although the rest of the thousands were "similar to". They don't count. The one hit that I opened apparently was a site for those with a fetish for eyes. I didn't bother joining so I could explore the site.

Bottom line, it was a word that Ms. McKinley apparently made up. The Blue Sword is a well written book and one that I read a couple of times a year because I enjoy it. I may be odd as I also reread several of my books such as The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey and several of my Mercedes Lackey and Madeleine L'Engle books.

So much for that.

We are not extensive bird lovers, but we do keep a couple of feeders full all winter, suet block out and have a heated bird bath that keeps the water ice free. We like to watch the birds out our patio door as they fight over position on the feeders and argue about who's in and who's out of the bath. Trying to sort out the various breeds of sparrows is a career in itself.

But, how do they know when bad weather is imminent? I almost titled this piece "There They Go; How Do They Know?", but I found a piece of a blog I had started several days ago and decided to use it instead. But, what am I mumbling about?

Well, in periods of calm between our winters storms that we have on almost a daily basis, the birds are thick around the feeders and on/in the bird bath. (Do you know that birds will bath at twenty degrees? I shudder to think about it.) Anyhoo, they will suddenly disappear. I mean completely, not just to near trees. And when we see them do so, we know that either the wind or the snow is here. Sure enough, within the hour the storm starts.

How do they know?