2025-04-04 08:00:00
随便写写。感觉我失去热情了……
哄睡一只小兔子要多久？
内容简单但细节多多，尤其是无处不在的时钟，仔细看指针就会发现，从这只 bunny 躺到床上到真的可以 “goodnight”，花了这么这么久呢。
骂人不好，但真的很想引用豆瓣这个短评：
故事通过极端的夸张与形式化，强调了“请”及附着其上的礼貌的重要性，配上 Briggs 夺人眼目、生动盎然的插画，做到了真正的寓教于乐。那些指责这书三观问题的，大概都是政治正确、一点幽默感也没有的傻逼。
至于豆瓣网友在说谁，点进上面的书籍链接就知。说实话看到所谓的“房间里的大象”的分析我也忍不住翻了个白眼。
两星。
介绍日本的各种妖怪，对这种书我要求已经很低了，但全是网络内容汇编，海量百度百科原句原段摘抄，谁给你们的勇气出成书？
Cozy and warm~
讲述森林里的小女巫的一年四季，首尾情节呼应，非常暖心。
以及下面这个画面真的不是在致敬拇指姑娘吗！
写了笔记。
绘本。正如标题，they all saw a cat! 那都是谁瞧见了呢？各种生灵。这个创作角度很有趣。
好多年前看过电影，剧情一般但我很喜欢设定：一个地下的微光城市。最近又想起来就找了 audiobook 听。书本身也就是及格分的 YA，情节很多地方过度简化稍微想想就觉得不对，但作者文笔不错，各个角色性格鲜明，而且有声书朗读者表现力十足，声线切换也十分自然，所以忽略设定上的 bug 听起来还是很愉快的。
听完之后去豆瓣翻了下发现我是 09 年看的电影，这片里居然还有罗南，配角阵容也很强大。不过似乎当年扑街得不行。书是系列小说，但电影续集再没有过消息。
副标题是 Not Just for Flying。那羽毛都有哪些功能？绘本里选择了各种鸟类不同部位的羽毛来表现。画面漂亮，文字准确，和之前我读过的另外两本 Feathers（分别见 2024十一月读书记录、2023读书简报）倒是正好可以互相映证。
2025-03-25 08:00:00
在 Audible 上听了三小时都还在讲青少年时代，再一看，还有九小时！实在没耐心继续听下去。我对 Edward O. Wilson 是很有兴趣的，但是这个兴趣在于他的科学道路，还是乖乖读他正儿八经的科普书吧，比如《生命的未来》、《蚂蚁的世界》之类。
阅读进度从 2022 年拖到 2025 年……开头倒是挺吸引人的，但我也只是对商朝的考古遗址以及人祭部分感兴趣而已。
针对这本书的批评相当多，主要就是集中在作者相当主观的对商周文明的推理上，已然是“六经注我”而非“我注六经”了。而让我决定完全放弃的原因是在豆瓣关注过作者一阵子，他对各类事件发表的言论以及使用的标签化词语让我觉得这不是一个我能够信任的、会谨慎使用语言和发表观点的人。后续我会找更严谨严肃的对商朝文化的研究书籍看，不想去费劲思考这书里到底多少是可靠的。
我感兴趣的一位前苏联自然写作者对这位作者很是推崇，随便挑了个微信读书有的版本开读。但碎成这样让人怎么读？每个小标题下都是这些空泛的描写和无谓的抒情，实在太像中学课本上所谓的美文美句，完全忍受不了。
题材吸引人，伊斯兰革命期间在伊朗共读被禁的《洛丽塔》。问题是，我太讨厌纳博科夫，并没有耐心看对他的文本进行的文本细读。尤其是《洛丽塔》取材自真实犯罪案件，纳博科夫却对此只字不提。他写这篇东西只让我感觉他在炫技，证明他可以用第二语言驾驭花哨的叙述。我从来不能欣赏单纯的文字游戏。没有作者的真心我只会觉得它们一无是处。
另一个非常个人的观感则是，纳博科夫名气太大，因此我不幸在读他的作品之前已经在不同地方读到过他许多访谈和言论，可真是一个尖酸刻薄、自视过高的人。这是我极不喜欢的创作者特质。
严格来说我根本还没开始读，但决定把它彻底从我的“或许可以读”列表里划掉。之前已经在一位朋友那边听过对这本书的不喜，可它实在名气太大我想或许也可以读读看？而帮助我完全打消这念头的是前两天听 自然选择 播客，“电子海洛因、科技试验场、影响世界的艺术？以《文明》谈谈游戏”这期提到了这本书，主播说“这本书的作者戴蒙德也许能跟尤瓦尔赫拉利很聊得来（狗头.jpg）”，我秒 get，懂了！播客里有展开聊，此处不再赘述。
原作名是 Wake Robin，然而作为标题的 robin 都不能得到好好确认的待遇。开篇就是一连串“知更鸟”，拜托，作者都写了“这是原生于美国大陆的鸟”，搞搞清楚，当美国人说 robin，他们指的是 American robin 旅鸫。而英国人口中的 robin 才是知更鸟，aka European robin，aka 欧亚鸲！关于 robin 的更多讨论也可以参考 Reddit 这个 帖 。
其他鸟类名字也不容乐观。来随机挑个句子。
译文：
假如他模仿得不是那么惟妙惟肖，至少像极了知更鸟、鹪鹩、灰猫嘲鸫、金翼啄木鸟、金翅鸟及歌雀的声音，甚至对“噼噗、噼噗”的那种啼鸣声模仿得十分相像，我认为连歌雀都会信以为真。
原文：
If not fully, and accurately repeated, there are at least suggested the notes of the robin, wren, cat-bird, high-hole, goldfinch, and song-sparrow. The pip, pip of the last is produced so accurately that I verily believe it would deceive the bird herself.
“robin, wren, cat-bird, high-hole, goldfinch, and song-sparrow” 对应的分别应该是旅鸫、鹪鹩、灰嘲鸫、北扑翅䴕、金翅雀、歌带鹀。这像话吗！你是一本写鸟的书！
我读完了第一章“众鸟归来”，错误是从头数到尾。开头连串 robin 就不说了，结尾则是把原文的“pigeon-hawk” 译成“鸽鹰”，“hen-hawk” 省略成“鹰”。别的不说，从作者描述“pigeon-hawk” 飞行模式时所用的词就能看出来，这是典型的隼的特征。Pigeon-hawk 是一个旧日词汇，指的是 merlin 灰背隼，因为它个头很小和鸽子相当。而 hen-hawk 同样是个有年代感的描述，通常指的是 red-tailed hawk 红尾鵟。也就是说，这俩都根本不是鹰！
选择读中文是因为这书写于百年前，我担心用词和现代英语会有隔膜难以理解，但翻了下发现并不难读。中文有好几个版本，除了此处的缪弋译本，另外被评价较多的是程虹版，同样是开头就错译成知更鸟，行了，可以停止了，我还是读原文去吧。
微信读书不知什么时候免费塞了这本书给我。奥康纳名气颇大我就点开读了点，开头第一段就让人皱眉头：
玫太太的卧室朝东，窗户低矮。那只公牛就站在窗下，月光将之镀上了一层银辉。它抬着头，似在静听屋内的动静，如一位耐心的神祇，下凡向她求爱。窗内漆黑一片，柔柔娇喘无力传至窗外。
“柔柔娇喘”？我之前没读过奥康纳但也大概知道她的风格，这绝对不像她会用的词。而原文是什么呢？看：
The window was dark and the sound of her breathing too light to be carried outside.
我请问，“柔柔娇喘”是从何而来啊？这还是位女性译者！太荒唐了。不打算再读。
2025-03-23 08:00:00
网站地址更新为 https://thewanderingallison.vercel.app ，RSS 为 https://thewanderingallison.vercel.app/rss.xml 。旧地址目前仍可访问但不会再同步更新。计划半年后永久下线。
多聊几句变更原因。旧地址墙内可访问，因此时不时有百度、头条、Deepseek 之类来的流量，这实在让我如鲠在喉。并不希望自己的内容被这些平台抓取。而且自从博客图床 变更 后图片实际已经不能在未翻墙的情况下浏览了，索性让文字和图片统一吧。
2025-03-09 08:00:00
人的动力可能不是爱而是恨——当然，说恨有些夸张了，但我就是因为太讨厌某些豆瓣红人并且豆瓣黑名单毫无用处还是总能看到 TA 们到处拉屎以至于忍无可忍自己动手了，尤其是刷读书页面，我造了什么孽要看到某些量子读书的“大 V”们的点评？
这两天上豆瓣还看到很多人转发豆瓣二十年的广播，那我也真是奇怪，二十年了！怎么就没人有这个需求吗！
总之，就是我写了个油猴脚本，可以屏蔽掉这些人在广播、日记下的回复，以及书影音页面的长短评和笔记。
脚本现在勉强达到了给其他人用也能凑合的地步，但还是有很多可改进的地方。怀疑我可能真的有点完美主义的倾向，我又不是专职写这个的，为什么要追求所有功能都达到最好啊？Anyway，还是心一横把它发出来了。
地址： Douban User Blocker 。
2025-03-09 08:00:00
一个庆祝。
本期 BGM（一定要听！）：
几年前启用 Neodb 时发现可以创建收藏单并将之设置为阅读目标，每次点进个人页面就会看到进度条，于是大概两年前我立下了一个小小的计划：读 100 本英文书。
今天完成了一半。虽然这 50 本里有 2/3 都是绘本/图像小说，难免有凑数之嫌，可对我来说也是小小的成就了。即使此刻的我觉得我的语言水平还是远远不能达到让自己满意的程度，即使我有时觉得用数字来衡量又难免有些虚荣。
不过看到许多比我不谦虚多了的人在社交媒体洋洋自夸时也忍不住要给自己打气，对自己骄傲一点！但我个人的确是不欣赏过分自信和自夸的人，我也不想成为那样的人。所以只在自己的地盘庆祝一下吧。希望 100 快点到来，当然更希望的是读到的每一本都是享受的。
2025-03-08 08:00:00
一本小书，用一天 24 小时讲 24 种不同时段活动的鸟儿，每次读一两篇很是轻松愉快。有些内容挺有趣，认真写了前几篇的笔记之后感觉这工作量和翻译一遍也差不多了于是很快开始偷懒，但写都写了，和部分摘抄一起在这里存个档吧。
虽然有插图但全是黑白的，看着很像木刻版画或者钢笔画，不是我喜欢的画风。
午夜出没，有不对称的耳朵（我一直以为所有猫头鹰耳朵都是位置不对称的但并不是，只有那些高度依赖听觉捕食的才这样），除了本身敏锐的听力，耳朵高度的不对称可以帮助它们绘制出对猎物位置的三维定位。
在除了南极洲的所有大陆分布，能够在完全黑暗的环境中觅食。
看着大只但重量只和一只鸽子相当。
仅存于新西兰某个岛的一种夜行性鸟儿。不会飞，和鸵鸟属于同一支远古亲缘。至于它们的另一种近亲，同样曾在这座岛屿游荡过的巨型恐鸟（体型有鸵鸟两倍大），自从人类到来就飞速灭绝了。
Little spotted kiwi 视力很差，近乎blind。靠 nostrils at the tip of their beaks 灵敏的嗅觉来发现食物。
在所有鸟类中，它们有着相对自身体型最大比例的蛋，重量最多可达到雌鸟体重的1/4，每次只产一到两枚卵。雄鸟负责孵化，时间长达两个月。
分布在南美洲雨林中，是唯一一种仅以果实为生的夜行性鸟类，尤其偏爱 palm、 laurel 的果实，以及野生牛油果。
作为夜行性鸟类，有非常敏锐的视觉系统（看来像上面的 little spotted kiwi 那样近乎半瞎的终究是少数）。相对于眼睛来说，它们的瞳仁异乎寻常地大，以收集尽可能多的光线——这一特征会更接近于深海鱼而非鸟类。
由于食物多是悬挂在树上，oilbird 有着柔软的羽毛和长长的翅膀，这让它们可以缓慢地飞行，在多果的枝头前盘旋悬停。这种飞行方式也有助于它们进出长长的用于筑巢的洞穴。
它们也是屈指可数的可以使用回声定位的鸟类。不过不像蝙蝠或海豚那样使用超声波，oilbird 发出的是人耳也可以识别的连续的咔嗒声。依赖这样的定位系统，它们在完全黑暗中也能够穿过洞穴找到自己的巢和幼鸟。
用粪便筑巢——这是它们排泄物的另一种用途——并将巢建在流水上方，这为巢提供了额外的保护，以防捕食者进入洞穴系统。（读到这儿突然想到鲸背月色里有一段类似经历的描述，进入了一个臭气熏天的有大量鸟类粪便的洞穴，回去一翻果然是 oilbird，但真是毫不意外又把鸟类名字翻错了。oilbird 是油鸱，不是油鸟！这书应该说物种名根本就没几个对的，当时我粗粗一挑就给它找出来几十处错，太无语了。）
oilbird 因为叫声刺耳，因此它们的另一个俗名 diablotin 在法语里的意思是小恶魔。
它们的幼鸟很肥硕，富于脂肪，以至于幼鸟甚至比成鸟还重。当人类首次在洞穴里遇见这些幼鸟时，发现可以把它们煮了得到丰富的油脂用来烹饪和照明——这就是英文名 oilbird 的由来。
When we meet this melodious nightingale, he has just returned to Berlin, Germany, after a three-thousand-mile journey from sub-Saharan Africa, across both vast desert and the Mediterranean Sea. What a trip for a small bird about the size of a house sparrow. When migrating nocturnally, this species uses both the stars above and Earth’s magnetic field to orient itself north in the spring and south in the fall.
Singing some two hundred different tunes or “phrases” on average, a single male nightingale uses its vocal prowess to both woo and warn.
体型娇小却能迁徙超过三千英里。有超过 200 种歌唱曲调。
（但其实我会对 nightingale 多留意是因为一首非常有名的歌叫 A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square，它出现在 Good Omens 的最后一集，是众多 CP 粉力争他俩是爱情的证据之一😂。 ）
Unlike 99 percent of all birds, cowbirds are “brood parasitic”: they lay their eggs in the nests of other species.
We humans have what is called “episodic memory,” a clear ability to keep track of where, when, and what occurs at a given time. Female cowbirds routinely engage in such mental time travel too. To accomplish this cognitive feat, female cowbirds have evolved an enlarged hippocampus, the brain region that is responsible for spatial memory. Male cowbirds do not have particularly large hippocampi—perhaps because they do not need to search and remember where host nests are located. Species related to cowbirds that build their own nests and incubate their own eggs, such as common grackles and red-winged blackbirds, also do not have these enlarged brain centers.
Cowbird，巢寄生鸟儿，会提前侦察附近的鸟巢并且起个大早把自己的卵产在这些寄养家庭的巢里。
This bird must visit up to 1,500 such flowers to find enough food in the course of a day’s foraging. Some hummingbird species, especially those living at high elevation sites where temperatures fall dramatically at sunset, save energy overnight by dropping their own temperatures to ambient levels and going into a nocturnal torpor. In this slumber, their heart rate and metabolism nearly come to a halt.
Hummingbirds have one of the highest heart rates among all animals—over one thousand heartbeats, accompanied by over two hundred breaths, per minute. Imagine those statistics as part of a human’s visit to a nurses’ station! (The average human has rates of fewer than one hundred beats and twenty breaths per minute.) In turn, bee hummingbirds and their relatives also need a high number of wingbeats to stay aloft—about eighty beats per second to hover in front of a nectar-rich flower—but males can elevate these wingbeat rates to well over one hundred per minute when showing off for a female, buzzing and singing to her to catch her interest.
robins are one of more than 250 species that host cowbird eggs. Unlike over 90 percent of these hosts, robins are robust egg rejecters—grabbing and tossing out the cowbird’s beige and speckled eggs. This is no surprise since the cowbird eggs are so remarkably different from the robin’s own immaculate turquoise-blue eggs. Still, even with this distinctness, the robin hosts typically take anywhere between an hour to a day to find and reject the foreign egg.
Without eggs, there are no hatchlings, and without hatchlings, there are no fledglings, juveniles, or next generations.
是上面的 cowbird 会巢寄生的 250 多种鸟类之一，但它们有能力识别 cowbird 的卵并且把这些寄生蛋扔出去。
Multiple males feed the female, and they often mate with her as well. It is common for two males to look after the female and her offspring at any given nesting cavity.
When nest cavities are prone to flooding, female eclectus parrots are known to kill the younger (and often male) hatchling in their nest to improve the chances of the older (often female) nestmate. This infanticide might seem surprising: why lay two eggs but kill one? If food and access to safety are limited, raising a sole chick successfully can be a more fruitful strategy than watching both chicks perish in the rising waters of a nest hole.
Contributing to the mystery is the pattern that few scientists have studied these birds in their original territories, their “natural ranges.” What we know from watching them in their introduced habitats and sites is that brother peacocks band together, displaying their stunning trains in the vicinity of each other as if cooperating to attract interested females to their proximity—no matter who gets to mate with them. This may seem altruistic, but it offers advantages from an evolutionary perspective. Genetically speaking, it might be best to have children yourself. But if you are to remain childless, it is still better for your brother to have children than for a complete stranger to do so. Evolutionary biologists call this type of reproductive gain “indirect fitness,” and it seems to explain why, for example, we as humans tend to give more and larger gifts to family members more closely related to us.
Another mystery is the peacock’s puzzling train. First note that this is not the bird’s tail but instead a collection of extra-long back feathers supported by sturdy, brown tail feathers. Sometimes a peacock’s train can stand over six feet tall around the male’s back. It is full of deep blue and green hues. Again, there is beauty beyond what our human eyes can see, including richness of color in the UV ranges. This is in part the result of tiny nanostructures present in the barbules of the of the so-called eyes of the peacock’s train. Yet, here’s the enigma: the peahen (much like humans) does not see in UV light! Nor do the peacocks or the main predators of peafowl. It seems a waste of a show!
严格来说，雄孔雀的“尾巴”并不是尾羽而是背羽，这些长长的、绚烂的羽毛是从它们的背上延伸出的。另一个让人惊讶的事实是，虽然雄孔雀的羽毛有如此多彩的结构色，可雌孔雀其实是识别不出的！这算什么？媚眼抛给了瞎子看？
In turn, ducks take to sleeping whenever they can, including during the brightest parts of daytime.
As we see, a duck can also sleep during the day. The most dangerous part of sleep is the inability to sense and alter one’s behavior in response to potentially harmful components of the environment: predators, parasites, competitors, or even the shoreline. As a response, ducks have developed a special type of slumber called “unihemispheric sleep,” in which one side of the brain is asleep while the other is awake and observing the environment. Half-brain sleep patterns are often accompanied by what scientists call “eye-peeks.” Such peeks are quick, not more than ten seconds, allowing the other eye and half of the brain half to fully engage in resting mode.
Looking at the winking birds, we might expect that the bigger the flock, the fewer the peeks. Why bother peeking when someone else is on the lookout? It is actually the opposite! The more neighbors a duck has, the more time it spends peeking during each bout of observation. Perhaps the ducks are quite sensitive to bumping into neighbors. A crowded patch of water means more peeks.
Despite their name, antbirds do not have an appetite for ants. Instead, these birds are ant followers; they can be reliably found near an army ant swarm off to attack or retreating from their daily foraging expedition.
叫 antbird 并不是因为它们吃蚂蚁，而是它们会跟随蚂蚁的“行军”路线吃沿路被惊起的其他动物。
Look at its three-foot-tall frame, its long tarsus (or foot bone), lean body, long neck, elaborate face pattern, and crown. Its costume is reminiscent of a nineteenth-century European clerk’s outfit, after which this bird’s Latin genus (Sagittarius) is named.
Together with caracaras of the tropical Americas, secretary birds are just one of a handful of hawk relatives that pursue their prey on foot rather than on the wing.
因为羽色和欧洲 19 世纪的 clerk 制服类似而得名。是少有的和 caracara 一样更多依靠脚而非翅膀来捕食（而且它们的捕猎对象可是蛇！）。 Caracara 是另一本我想看的书 A Most Remarkable Creature 的主角，这提醒我又有多少东西还没读……
（不管是这个名字、羽色、还是能够吃蛇的凶悍本领都让我想起 Kingsman 里的 Gazelle。）
Whatever the reason, most birds lay eggs that are recently fertilized and undeveloped. One exception to this rule is the common cuckoo.
Unlike the cowbird, the cuckoo keeps her egg in her oviduct to be incubated for an extra day before she lays it in the nest of another species, replacing one of the host species’ eggs. Why should cuckoo eggs be “preincubated” before laying? Preincubation gives the cuckoo chick a chance to hatch earlier. This early start spells doom for the host’s clutch and brood, as the young cuckoo is a vicious killing machine. Within two to four days of hatching, while still naked and blind, the cuckoo chick pushes all the other eggs and chicks from the nest, often while helpless foster parents watch.
Cowbirds lay eggs that are proportional to the female parasite’s size. Not so for the cuckoos, which lay especially small eggs relative to their own body size. This is part of the deception—the cuckoo’s egg is similar to the foster parents’ in size and appearance, if not contents!
大杜鹃！也就是布谷鸟。也是大名鼎鼎的巢寄生鸟儿了。
“Standard-wing” might seem a misnomer since we see two long flight feathers, one trailing each of the wings.
Longer than its own body length, these special feathers come with a long, barbless shaft and a dark patterned feathery patch toward the tip.
The risk involved with this air show is high because it makes the showy male vulnerable to attack, so it must be important in attracting a mate. These feathers make the males more conspicuous during its otherwise well-camouflaged rest in daylight, too. Perhaps because of this, males do not help incubate the eggs during the day, only at night. Still, comparatively, these males appear to be better parents than the peacock and male kākāpō, who refuse to engage in any paternal duties at all!
夜鹰，从背上有两条延伸而出的像旗帜一样比它们自己身体还长的装饰羽。这个名字还让我一下子想起宫泽贤治《夜鹰之星》的封面，原来我早就（在纸上）见过这种鸟儿呀。
In addition to having larger than standard raptorial eyes, bat hawks also sport the widest and largest bill gape; they are able to open their mouths wider than any other hawk (relative to their skull size, of course).
no matter the location or adaptation, these hawks are bat hunting specialists, restricting their feeding behaviors to about an hour before and after the emergence of the swarms from the bat caves.
Even the breeding season of the bat hawk is timed and coordinated with their prey mammals. During incubation, the male of the pair must feed both the incubating female and himself. He does this by chasing slowly moving and poorly maneuvering pregnant female bats. In turn, the fledgling hawks will benefit from growing at the same time as the bat pups; as novice fliers, the juvenile bats make easier meals.
不管是在 bat hawk 的哪个分布地，它们的活动时间都是跟着当地的蝙蝠种群走的呢，在蝙蝠出洞前后几小时守在它们的洞穴口。而且它们的繁殖时间也和蝙蝠群一致——因为那时雌鸟会无法捕猎，雄鸟需要养活一家子，而这时蝙蝠恰好也会有怀孕的蝙蝠和刚出生的小蝙蝠，会更易于捕捉。
书后给出的拓展阅读清单：
The Bird Way 和前阵子我读的 What an Owl knows 是同一个作者，她的书写得细致但是又有趣味，阅读体验很愉快。Understanding Bird Behavior 我读了中文版，不推荐，虽然确实收录了许多新的研究结果，但写得很无趣，和 What an Owl Knows 对比立刻就看出写作水平的差距（详见 2024十月读书记录 ）。
