Sunday surprise: osprey! — & more..

[ by Charles Cameron — elemental battles — one extraordinary nature video in slomo, and another with an interesting angle on threesidedness ]

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But first, by way of preamble..

I’ve told the tale of how I came to appreciate the power of DoubleQuotes by running across these two parallel quotes in the works of two writers I admire, Haniel Long and Annie Dillard, in DoubleQuotes — origins, while in Bobcat jumps shark.. I posted a photo of an encounter that strongly reminded me of the pair of them.

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You can therefore imagine how delighted i was this week to add this fourth entry into what is rapidly becoming a catalogue of fights-to-the-death between creatures of opposing elements:

The bird, as in Haniel Long’s tale, is an osprey, it’s battle is with a heavy fish — but in this case, it is the osprey that survives the encounter — and the slow motion video capture is simply astonishing.

Which reminds me..

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I have already posted three times on the subject of ternary logic and three player games — in Of games III: Rock, Paper, Tank, in Spectacularly non-obvious, I: Elkus on strategy & games, and in Spectacularly non-obvious, 2: threeness games — but had somehow omitted any mention of another spectacular wildlife video, this one capturing a three-cornered battle between buffalos, lions and a crocodile or two, which can be found on YouTube under the title Battle at Kruger:

With 77 million views and counting at the time I post this, it’s a video you may very well have seen before — and a terrific testament to the idea that sheer quantity may on occasion be indicative of real quality.