Huang developed
The campus of Beijing Normal University, where I work, is roughly square in the third ring road of Beijing, divided into two parts, north and south, the south is the teaching area, and the north is the family area. My family lives in a dormitory building near the north gate of the school, located on the second floor, with a north-south transparency. The trees outside the windows on both sides are diverse and high, suitable for different birds to inhabit. There are also bird feeding points and cat food drop-off points outside the north window, and birds and animals come from time to time.
In the area of the parking space outside the road under the window of the north house, there are three cherry blossom trees, one morning cherry tree and two evening cherry trees. To the east are two persimmon trees, and to the north of the persimmon trees there are three whitebark pines in the green space. In the green space outside the south balcony stands more than a dozen poplars taller than the five-story building, and some miscellaneous trees such as toon and cloves grow in the gaps. There are many birds in the trees, and I am often woken up by the birds in the morning.
Whitebark pines used to have pine cones hanging all year round. In spring, pale yellow spike-like pine flowers grow on the branches, tower-shaped, with the spire upwards. The fruit turns yellow in autumn and slowly turns black in the following spring. The pine cones hanging from the branches and the red persimmons became the food and heart of the birds for a winter.
There is a bird feeding point on the side of the wisteria shelf at the west end of the green space, where there are things such as stick residue, corn grits, millet and so on, and all kinds of birds stop flying here. In winter, after a large flock of sparrows has eaten enough, they fall to the bushes by the red wall to bask in the sun and chat non-stop. In summer, sometimes it floats over the black cloud-like wings of large-billed crows. There is also a cat food drop-off point in the east not far from the bird feeding point, and when the meal is opened, some stray cats come to eat one after another.
For readers, watching birds and animals can be seen in the eyes. In the spring, summer, autumn and winter, there are always birds, animals, plants and trees, which add a lot of fun to my study life.
In the early hours of early spring, the chirping of the dove came from outside the window: cuckoo-cuckoo-grunt-grunt——, seemed to echo each other; at the same time, "Cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo!" could be heard at the same time. Cuckoo-Gollum! There was a rush of voices, and the pause in between was barely two seconds. The campus dove is a bead-necked dove with a black background and white spots on the back of its neck, and its tail feathers are fanned out when flying, revealing the white end of the outer side, like two white edges.
At the beginning of March, walking on the sunny road in the morning, the breeze was blowing, and I heard the gentle and bright singing of the crow's plover: the song was syllable, with high and low ups and downs, like a passionate outpouring and calling. Several males stand on tall, tall branches of poplars covered with brown "caterpillars", orange-yellow beaks and moist black feathers. Passing by the Xi Garden between the Information Building and the Seventh Floor, a crow sings on the spire of a tall cedar tree in the center of the garden, under the blue sea sky.
The Crow is the lead singer on the Spring Campus. Other birds were chirping: spotted doves, magpies chirping, sparrows chirping, gray magpies—ah——, converging into a chorus of spring, and the cold silence of winter was swept away.
This spring semester, I was lecturing on "Intensive Reading of Modern Literary Masterpieces" in the classroom on the second floor of the seventh floor, and the window was filled with oily walnut groves. At the end of the class, the chirping of the crows was heard. I asked, do you know what kind of bird this is? Some students answered that it was a crow. I said, I don't know if you noticed, from early spring to early summer, this course is accompanied by the chirping of blackbirds from beginning to end. There was laughter and applause from the audience. In the middle of summer, the crows will stop singing and often forage on the ground. The dove's "grunting" sound is incessant for four hours, but it is not as turbulent as in spring.
A few times, I was walking on the road, and occasionally a few "cuckoo, cuckoo" chirps came from a distance. I hear it a few times a year, but I never see a bird. I wanted to look for it, but the sound source was very far away, the interval between the front and back of the call was large, and the sound was ethereal, which was difficult to locate. No wonder Wordsworth wrote in the poem "To the Cuckoo": "Cuckoo! Should I call you a bird, /or are you just a wandering voice? "Once in a dream, I faintly heard the cuckoo's call, and the sound seemed to be streaked through the air, as if lying on the wooden bed of the old house in my hometown, and the layers of wheat waves rolled in my mind.
Early winter mornings. The branches of several persimmon trees hung sparsely with red persimmons, gently swaying in the cold wind. Bald eagles, woodpeckers, sparrows and magpies flock to enjoy the breakfast buffet. A thin branch sticks to the bottom of a persimmon and is the best point to peck. The white-headed grebes eat in turn, the sparrows also stare at the air, and the magpies are too heavy to stand on the thick branches in the distance. A colorfully clad woodpecker went up and down the trunk, pounding the trunk banging on it, and the other stood tall and tasted a few bites of persimmons that it didn't seem to like.
On a winter afternoon, there was no wind. One or twenty gray magpies rose and fell between the whitebark pine and the magnolia tree, coming and going, making a soft, long, soft chirp from time to time, and their feathers pulled into a pale blue-gray cloud. Grey magpies are more elegant in size, plumage and voice than other magpies, and Reed shore praises in "Things on Earth": "The gray magpie is feminine in shape, and its plumage has gray and pale blue lusters. Their cries are feminine, euphemistic, and leisurely. When they come together, they resemble a group of ancient ladies. "When they fly together, it seems to me like a group of dancing women.
Our campus is famous for its crow winter habitat. Tweets for this year's celebration dubbed the school "Hogwarts of the East." I've written about the campus crows. After that, there was a special experience that I will never forget. It was early February last year, at dusk, snow flakes fluttering and the temperature dropped to minus five or six degrees Celsius. During the winter vacation after the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, there was no one in the teaching area. The crows on the plane trees on both sides of the road suddenly increased, flying and stopping, and the noise was disturbing. When the sky is clear, they are motionless in the tall trees, quiet. Walking to the east of the seventh floor of the church, I was surprised by the scene of black pressure in front of me: on the branches of the trees between the seventh and eighth teachings, on the roof of the tiles on the eighth floor of the teaching, there were crows, which had never been seen before. They perched on the roof of the tiles, and when they saw someone approaching, some of them flew up. I took out my phone to take a picture, and the bright light made more crows fly high. The first time I saw crows perched on the roof of the tiles, it was because there was heating in the building, and it was in a shelter from the wind. During the day, it is not easy to forage for food, and at night it is not easy to be frozen, and it is not easy to live. The wild animals sleeping tonight will not be better.
In addition to the grass and birds, because they often return late from the studio, they have a chance to meet some neighbors who come out day and night. They are mainly hedgehogs and weasels. Usually at about 10:30 p.m., I come home from the studio, there are few pedestrians on the road, and the night is quiet. At this time, I often yawn for days, and occasionally the figure of the little creatures flashes in front of my eyes, and I am curious, and I immediately come to the spirit.
Hedgehogs usually roam the bushes and flowers on the side of the road, and when they see someone coming, they run away and hide. Hedgehogs are most active on summer nights. At night, I went downstairs to take out the garbage, and when I saw a hedgehog passing by, I walked over to block it; it stood still, and I touched it gently with my toes, and it immediately curled up into a chestnut shell bucket with dense spikes. Having seen a hedgehog in the midst of the moonflowers, I crept closer and heard the crisp sound of it biting off the roots of the plant. I turned on the cell phone video, the light came on, and it lowered its head, motionless, its long nose almost touching the ground.
The more common wild mammal is the weasel. All year round, from late afternoon to late at night, they can be seen running fast against the ground in the family area and the teaching area. Unlike hedgehogs, they hibernate for months.
At night, weasels are commonly skilled in and out of the garbage cans in the teaching area, and it seems that they mainly rely on human food waste for their livelihood. My son, who was in junior high school, went out in the afternoon and met the weasels eating cat food, pulled out his mobile phone to take pictures, and the weasels ran away, but did not run far, but hid in the grass, exposing their heads to observe. When the people walked away, it returned to the bowl and continued to eat. One night, my son showed me a video and asked what it was, stealing cat food. At night, the light is not good, and the picture is blurry. However, as soon as he looked at the slender figure, he knew that it was a weasel, and his two eyes reflected the light. I haven't seen a mouse for many years, which is not necessarily the credit of the weasel or stray cat, and it is estimated that they have long forgotten to catch mice.
In the morning, as I walked under the wall on the east side of the dormitory building, a weasel protruded most of its body from the drainage hole in the corner of the wall and met a large brown-yellow stray cat, which stood still and looked at each other. The weasel probably realized that it was not a heavyweight with the other party, and it did not act rashly. After a stalemate of about three or four seconds, the weasel turned around and returned to the hole, and the fat cat swung away.
In mid-July last year, the epidemic was still tense, and people were still trying to avoid going out. At ten o'clock in the evening, I ran in the neighborhood, and at the end of the day, I went to the small garden next to my house to practice kicks. It was quiet all around, and there was a faint sound of music in the east. In the pale yellow light of the lamppost, two small weasels, about half the size of an adult, ran out from a holly bush in the north, one after the other. One slipped into the sun chrysanthemum bush next to it; the other turned left, jogged for a short while, stopped for a moment, and then jumped over the holly bush a foot or two high grass and burrowed into the bush, as if playing cool. At this time, the little guy in the flower bush appeared again, chased after the companion in front of him, and also jumped up and jumped into the bush. The two little ones may have slept well during the day, accumulated enough energy, and sneaked out to play at night when their parents went out to eat. Walking to the east of the small garden, the soft and cool music gradually became clear. A middle-aged woman, a long plain dress, long hair tied behind her back, accompanied by the music played by the mobile phone on the bench, dancing in front of several moon flowers. This summer night is quiet and beautiful.
I have been living and working on this campus for twenty years. Overall, there are more buildings and parking lots, more small patches of flowers and bonsai planted in season, and fewer green spaces and large trees every year. At night, private cars fill almost every space. Last year, the woods on the east side of the tranquil Red House were converted into a parking lot the size of a basketball court. A two- or three-meter-tall holly on the north side of the 8th floor of Leyu was removed and about twenty new parking spaces were added. These places were originally home to wildlife. Many large trees are cut down or truncated, different birds and insects inhabit different heights, and cities do not like tall and oblique trees.
Every winter, a large number of small-billed crows are a major attraction for the school. I have posted several photos of crows in the circle of friends, and some friends joked that they would come to see crows in winter and eat crow fried sauce noodles. Last fall, the crows were only on campus for a week or so, and the pavement under the plane tree in front of the library had just been whitened by the crow's excrement, and they disappeared. In late autumn, often with a strong wind, flocks of crows return from the far north to the campus where ginkgo biloba and poplar leaves are scattered. The years are turning, late autumn is coming, I wonder if the crows will return as scheduled this year?
2021.9.12
【Source: Wen Wei Po】
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author, if there is an error in the source or infringement of your legitimate rights and interests, you can contact us through the mailbox, we will deal with it in a timely manner. Email address: [email protected]