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Sandpiper
By peace | April 9, 2008
Sandpipers are a varied group of shore birds in the Family Scolopacidae, Order Charadriiformes. The 85 species in this family include the sandpipers, curlews, snipes, woodcocks, godwits, dowitchers, turnstones, and phalaropes. With the exception of Antarctica, this family occurs worldwide. Thirty-seven species in the sandpiper family breed regularly in North America. The smaller species of sandpipers and the closely related plovers (Family Charadriidae) are commonly known as “peeps” to bird watchers, because of their high pitched vocalizations.
It is difficult to describe a “typical” sandpiper. Members of this family vary greatly in body size and shape, for example, ranging from 5 to 24 in (13-61 cm) in body length, with either short or long legs, a beak that is straight, curves upward, or curves downward, and a neck that is either long or short. There are also great variations in color and behavior within this group of birds. Because of the enormous variations between species, the sandpiper family is extremely interesting, but difficult to concisely define.
Which Sandpiper am I? I am the Marsh Sandpiper…
Life is such a joke really. I am so focused with doing things that I love, so focused on doing things that interest me and I had not been a all-rounded person as such. Language, especially English and Chinese is such a chore, having to learn Vocabulary, and the chinese idioms. History and Literature was nightmare. General Paper was even worse.
At home, I helped my parents to read letters, filled forms and answered the telephone if the other party spoke English. My sister is proficient in Chinese. She taught me Chinese when I was young. My brothers taught me English. They never failed to teach me reading and writing. I got scolding from my sister, she always hit my head.
During my Primary level, I learn simple Mathematics calculation from my father. He taught me addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. He is a patient father who teaches well. The only thing is that he is illiterate, not having the opportunity to go to school, because their family was poor, and their parents were seem biased.
Brother Johnny taught me how to write good English, how to learn from composition and how to do Mathematics questions when I was in the Secondary level. He was not patient — he would scold and slap when I could not do the question. However, that is how we learn, and all is now over, and I still love my brother, he is my good brother, always.
Since young, my father always said that my legs looked like that of the sandpiper (chang khoi kah, pronounced in Teochew). During my university day, there was a field trip to Sungei Buloh. I saw so many sandpiper, and that was what I always remember what my father said of me. At Sungei Buloh, we were given binoculars to watch the birds. It was never my interest to look at birds. I could not even see any birds, but only lots of sandpipers and some egrets.
However, now I realised so many things, and it is so unbelievable.
Last night, I watched the news and I saw pipers at Singapore Polytechnic (if I remembered correctly), that was so beautiful. I love the sound, the pipers, with their clothings, that looked so smart.
Topics: All Posts, Animals, Personal |
April 11th, 2008 at 11:47 am
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