Russian mass-heater

So, this actually answers a question I had years and years ago about a Russian novel I was reading - or maybe it was a play - in which a character was "sleeping on the stove". My only experience with wood stoves was with the tin and cast iron kind that you most decidedly can't sleep on.

More and more I want to go visit the East of Europe. I think they know some things that the West and the stupid, indulged, lazy fat and boring 1st world have forgotten and forgotten to care about.

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Also, finally identified the bird I heard the other night. Tawny owl. Probably the female.



From the trees behind the house last night. Not the first lower-pitched one, but the second, high screechy one. The idea is that the female and male of a given species have different calls, so they can locate each other. I know the sound carries a long way, since I've heard it across the fields too.

A friend who is a birder said you identify birds by learning their calls. Never been a big bird-person, but now I can get magpies, pheasants and blackbirds, as well as the very easily recognisable chirp of the parrot that lives in the bay tree who comes out in the spring. Not too many of course, but I get it now. Birding isn't about looking, it's about listening.



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