I first learned this word on a TV nature program, describing the way raptors hold their wings
partially outstretched, to hide foot at their feet, presumably to keep other raptors from
seeing it. On another TV program, I saw anhinga, a water bird that catches small fish, holding
wings in same way, quite possibly to lure prey into the shadow where they could be caught.
I have seen live mockingbirds doing it where grass had been recently cut, possibly again to
lure insects into the shadow, so that their movement could be seen, and the mockingbird could
catch them.
Can you think of other birds that do this?
I have often seen cormorant, also fish catchers, adopt a similar but perhaps wider stance. I have always assumed they were drying their wings after diving, but perhaps not.
The anhinga is one of the few fish eating birds whose feathers are not
waterproof, so they have to spread their wings to dry after fishing.
I don't know about the cormorants. All I have heard of them lately is
that they have become a serious problem, being able to take as much
as three thousand dollars worth of catfish in a night from catfish farms
along the lower Mississippi. And the owners may not even harass them.
God bless the bleeding heart birders.
In reply to:
to take as much
as three thousand dollars worth of catfish in a night from catfish farms
along the lower Mississippi
wwh, I hope you see the humor in this! 
The catfish farmers might not see the humor in it, though. Reminds me of the fastidious Southern gardeners all azalea-proud--and along come the lovely deer to chomp those azaleas down to stubs!
Dear Ww: the farmers losing the three thousand bucks are not amused. The article I saw
said they were planning to try using radio controlled model boats with bright lights to
gently persuage the cormorants to go elsewhere. I predict the cormorants will light on
the boats and use them for mobile perches, and fill them with guano intil they sink.
I gotta go search to see if any more news about that.
I must say the article I just found makes more sense than the one quoted above.
It says catfish farms represent value of 714 million bucks, and birds sere taking
20 million bucks a year from the farms. So the feds OK's culling the cormorants.
And the article was dated 1998. Catf;sh farming makes very good sense to me.
So far I haven't seen any reports of environmental damage. And I enjoy the fish.
http://www.cnn.com/EARTH/9803/13/cormorant.
I like catfish a little. Would much rather have flounder.
But, all that aside, I certainly--in a serious mood--could sympathize with the farmers.
Still: The thought of farmers building this luscious fish bowl of supper for the cormorants catches my fancy and strikes me as humorous--outside the bounds of reality, you see. It's not good to be serious all the time. Sometimes you gotta see it through the cormorants' eyes.
Here we go, Dr. Bill....there was a big article in the February
Smithsonian about the cormorant problem and some folks who decided to take it into their own hands
(recreational fishing guides in Upstate New York
[hi ASp and Faldage!). Surprised you missed it!
Oh, and the coromorants don't have water-proofing either.
This is just the abstract, but they provide a full-text link, now, at the bottom of the page. Just click on that for the complete story, it's worth the read.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian/issues03/feb03/cormorants.html
Dear Whit: The Smithsonian article was about cormorants hurting sport fishing.
As Tom Lehrer sang so long ago: Fish gotta swim, Birds gotta fly.....
But they won't last long if they try!
from the Article: No one disputes that for 15 years now fishermen in the small New York town of Henderson have watched ever-growing numbers of cormorants gobble up lake fish amid declining incomes. But, as the author asks, are the cormorants to blame, or are the birds scapegoats for large-scale environmental changes affecting the Great Lakes?
Any of our Midwesterners have a first-hand account or experience with this?
Hey, Dr. Bill, that was Gershwin. Or did Lehrer do a parody?
If you visit American city,
You will find it very pretty.
Just two things of which you must beware:
Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air.
Pollution, pollution,
They got smog and sewage and mud.
Turn on your tap and get hot and cold running crud.
See the halibuts and the sturgeons
Being wiped out by detergents.
Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly,
But they don't last long if they try.
Pollution, pollution,
You can use the latest toothpaste,
And then rinse your mouth with industrial waste.
Just go out for a breath of air,
And you'll be ready for Medicare.
The city streets are really quite a thrill.
If the hoods don't get you, the monoxide will.
Pollution, pollution,
Wear a gas mask and a veil.
Then you can breathe, long as you don't inhale.
Lots of things there that you can drink,
But stay away from the kitchen sink.
Throw out your breakfast garbage, and I've got a hunch
That the folks downstream will drink it for lunch.
So go to the city, see the crazy people there.
Like lambs to the slaughter,
They're drinking the water
And breathing (cough) the air.
© Tom Lehrer. All rights reserved
Thank you, tsuwm. Is that from TWTWTW days?
Actually®, the *original was Jerome Kern's
"Can't Stop Lovin' That Man of Mine" from the musical
Showboat...JFTR.
wwh,
I must tell you every time I think of this thread, I hear this phrase you typed hastily--and it's really very funny when you think about it, although you didn't readily agree with my seeing humor in those cormorants feasting at the farmers' expense:
to hide foot at their feet
I just keep hearing one bird say to the other, "Shh! Be quiet! I'm hunting! Can't you see that I'm hiding the foot at my feet?"
Dear WW: I'd make more typos if I could be sure they all would amuse you. That particular typo puzzles me a bit, as I was thinking "food" and have no explanation for typing a "t" for a "d". My touch typing is a big help to me now that I can't read the labels on the keys.
One good outcome of an interesting typo is it tends to cement the word under discussion into my brain. I'm sure mantling will remain in permanent residence as I imagine that bird hiding a foot in its feet. Reminds me of the little country kids playing with chickens' feet, but I better not go into that bit of country lore, for it would surely disgust some readers here.
I don't mind making typos here so much as reading some horribly constructed sentence I wrote in haste. I figure most of us are typing pretty quickly anyway--looking in on the board at work for a few minutes--trying to get in a few words edgewise--so typos are just part of the game. But to see that I wrote a long sentence and somehow got lost midstream, forgot what the subject was, and ended up with a glaring subject-verb disagreement? Aggggggghhhh! I just groan in pain once sighting the disagreement. Terrible thing to have your subjects and verbs disagreeing with each other on an otherwise friendly language board.
I must confess that mantling maneuver has me a bit confused. I would like to see exactly what mantling is and what it isn't. I keep imagining a bird flying in a hovering manner. Wish I'd seen your program.
I also came upon this:
http://web.genie.it/utenti/d/doberm/heraldry.htmmantling as it is used in heraldry. think of the shape of a mantle, and it begins to make sense.
What a startling photograph that is of the osprey, et'! So, mantling does look like a hover, as I'd imagined, only in the case of the photo link you gave, the osprey's position is a stationary hover. Since the photolink mentions "chicks," I take it that the osprey is mantling over at least one very large chick--its feathers appear to be the same as the adult with the piercing eyes.
I've seen ospreys on the Outer Banks (NC) carry sticks in their talons for nest building. They carry the sticks with aeronautical sense: fore to aft. Many thanks for the link to that unforgettable photograph!
Too bad the heraldry information didn't suggest that sometimes feathers were used for the mantling in a coat of arms, although greenery was mentioned as being usual.
How delightful! I think I've just learned my first heraldry term!
yeah, I thought that was an amazing photo, too. birds are so ****ing cool!
here's a link to the rest of the page:
http://www.ctbirding.org/photos_of_ct_birds.htmthough unfortunately there are no more pictures of that osprey...
What do these mean in the above posts?
Now wait a cotton-pickin' minute! et'! Did you take a gander at that black-headed gull? Good grief. It's enough that they call the Mexican gray wolf, which is not a gray wolf, a gray wolf. But to call that not-black-headed gull a black-headed gull is preposterous! It has one little bitty dot of black on its mostly white and gray head! These people who name animals are cryptologists, every single last one of 'em! Or they're color blind!
What a lot of meanings there are to the word mantle:
mantle
n.
5ME mantel < OE mentel & OFr mantel, both < L mantellum, mantelum, a cloth, napkin, cloak, mantle < ? Celt6
1 a loose, sleeveless cloak or cape: sometimes used figuratively, in allusion to royal robes of state, as a symbol of authority or responsibility
2 anything that cloaks, envelops, covers, or conceals !hidden under the mantle of night"
3 a small meshwork hood made of a noncombustible substance, such as a thorium or cerium compound, which when placed over a flame, as in a lantern, gives off a brilliant incandescent light
4 the outer wall and casing of a blast furnace, above the hearth
5 MANTEL
6 Anat. old term for the cortex of the cerebrum
7 Geol. a) the layer of the earth‘s interior between the crust and the core b) MANTLEROCK
8 Zool. a) a major part of a mollusk or similar organism consisting of a sheet of epithelial tissue with muscular, neural, and glandular elements: it covers the viscera and foot under the shell of univalve or bivalve mollusks, secretes the shell, and forms the body of cephalopods b) the soft outer body wall of a tunicate or barnacle c) the plumage on the back and folded wings of certain birds when it is all the same color
vt.
3tled, 3tling to cover with or as with a mantle; envelop; cloak; conceal
vi.
1 to be or become covered, as a surface with scum or froth
2 to spread like a mantle, as a blush over the face
3 to blush or flush
4 Falconry to spread first one wing, then the other, over the outstretched legs: said of a perched hawk
And how few meanings to "dismantle"
dismantle
vt.
3tled, 3tling 5OFr desmanteller, to take off one‘s cloak: see DIS3 & MANTLE6
1 to strip of covering
2 to strip (a house, ship, etc.) of furniture, equipment, means of defense, etc.
3 to take apart; disassemble
—SYN STRIP1
dis[man4tle[ment
n.
dis[man4tler
n.
Isn't there the phrase "a dismantling expression"?
In reply to:
4 the outer wall and casing of a blast furnace, above the hearth
Do you have mantlepieces in the Americas? And do you use them to display ornaments?
Bingley
sure. and many a fireplace never sees the light of a real fire anymore and has itself become ornamental.
A hundred years ago, the mantle over the fireplace displayed
various memoralilia, with unlit candlesticks and matches on each end. Abive tghe ceter a picture or portrait. Sometimes
a sampler stitched by a cherished daughter.
It's been a long time since I have seen a sampler. And now
the refrigerator door has become the display place.
Oh, wwh, how funny and true! What a clever observation about the movement from mantle to refrigerator door!
There is a wonderful fireplace mantle at the Dooley House at Maymont here in Richmond. There's a quite a mystery about it. Various scholars and curators have examined it, but cannot unravel what the separate frames of carved wood figures refer to. They suspect folks tales may be the source of the carvings, but they cannot pinpoint the specific tales. I hope I live long enough to see the mystery of the Dooley House mantle solved.
Edit: Why is it mantle for fireplace shelf can be spelled both ways: mantle or mantel? Is there some preference of one over the other?
Why is nicke; also at times spelled nickle?
I do believe Us Prescriptivists would say that mantel is the only accurate spelling of the shelf above the fireplace, and nickel is the only way to spell the metal.
This of course does not prevent Many People from misspelling the words regularly, under the mistaken impression that they are correct.
Prescriptivist or not, MW lists both mantle and mantel. What are you prescriptivists gonna do? Dismantle MW?
you'd be hard pressed to find a modern dictionary that's prescriptivist--although the AHD usage notes are prescriptivist in nature.
just for the record
"That was the week that was" (TV show)
Thank you, Missus Anna.
SWTWTWTWW = So that's what TWTW was
AHD3 has separate entries for mantel, the fireplace adjunct and mantle, the covering of whatever sort. Mantel is derived from manteltree which is derived from mantle + tre, beam. As if that weren't enough, we note from Dr Bill's post above, that an older spelling of mantle was, in OE, mentel and, in OF, mantel, both from Latin mantellum.
I have a slip of paper in my Junk Drawer Memory® with an almost legible scribble on it that seems to say something about a bird called a nickle, but I can't find anything a-googling.
nickle
<zoology> The European woodpecker, or yaffle.
Synonym: nicker pecker.
Source: Websters Dictionary
Now this was an interesting quick search, Faldage. I entered 'nickle' into Onelook.com's search engine. There were about ten or so dictionaries listed. I chose the medical dictionary shown. The medical dictionary, as quoted above, referenced Webster. Ya' gotta love yaffle, but ya' 'specially gotta love, bein' the man you are, nicker pecker!!
I ask you: Was this a matter of coincidence--or destiny? You've finally found your kindred spirit, Close Brother, among the avians.
Ya know? I never think of looking in Onelook. Thanks for the lesson, Dub' Dub.
Both names "nickel" and "cobalt" came from German words for evil spirits, because the ores that contained them were a nuisance. The early miners had no use for the ores as they did not know that valuable metals could be gotten from them, and many years would go by before that became p;ossible.
I notice the USn's all said mantle/mantel. I would always use mantlepiece.
Bingley
And just for assonance, the mantelpiece is supported by a lintel (resisting temptation to say "lintelpiece").
Mickey Mantle!
a New York Yankee hero!...hi Faldage! (I just couldn't let the thread go by without mentioning that)
Got to thinking about this word after the new mantel thread, and on looking it up in Onelook I noticed the only definition in some of the major dictionaries (i.e. AHD) is:
chiefly Southern and Eastern; see mantel (Southern and Eastern US I'm assuming). Others describe the ornamental fireplace mantel. Now, I've always used mantel and mantelpiece interchangeably for the fireplace accoutrement, but I was never aware this was a regional dialect as some of the dictionaries seem to desginate (and which, as Bingley, seems to be a favored regionalism in Britain, or some parts of it, as well). But the main reason I grew inquisitive enough to research is that we've also come to use mantelpiece interchangeably with centerpiece to decribe the featured ornament or knic-knac which takes the center spot on the fireplace mantel. For instance, a ceramic Santa in a Sleigh sculpted by my mother when she was young has traditionally come to claim the center spot on the fireplace mantle at Christmastime, so we say that it's our Christmas mantlepiece. I can find no citations for this usage and was wondering if anyone else has ever used mantelpiece in place of centerpiece. Or, sometimes, in finding something striking while antiquing we might say, "That's a real mantlepiece!" The center of the fireplace mantel being the focal point of the room, "mantelpiece" is conferring the object a higher place of honor than as a "centerpiece" on, say, the dining room table. So there is actually a semantical nuance of differentiation here. But not much.
(
Edit: I have again deleted the typoed omission of "points out" after "as Bingley" in the above post to preserve, for posterity, the integrity of the ensuing discussion and eatoin's dashing witticism as per Bingley as a favoured regionalism...very favored!
)
I've used mantlepiece that way; matter-of-fact, I think that's the only way I use it. a mantlepiece goes on the mantle...
[is Bingley a favored regionalism? or would that be favoured?]
Well! I've been called some things in my time but never that I can recall a favoured regionalism.
Bingley
In my neck of the woods a mantelpiece is strictly the mantel, its supports and framework, but not something that sits as an ornament on a mantel. There are some very elaborate mantelpieces that I would think included the woodwork all about the shelf--but I honestly have never heard anyone refer to something sitting on a mantel as a mantelpiece.
no fair, WO'N!Okay, eta, have it
your way!
(see my new edit in the above post)
hahaha!
I love this place!
WW, usage in my neck of the woods matches that you describe.
well, wooden matches are certainly useful.
>wooden matches are certainly useful
and are often found on mantelpieces.
-joe (WBF) ingle
Yes, we have a mantlepiece that serves as a match holder.
(choose your semantic)