Over at the "Geograph" photo-mapping project to which I have submitted 17,142 images, many of the tracking possibilities of computers have been fully exploited to benefit members. For example, through the clicking of a couple of keyboard buttons I can see that I have captured 218 images of farmhouses, 1092 pictures of churches and 2455 photographs of paths.
However, today I am going to focus on sheep. The algorithms tell me that I have banked 371 pictures of sheep in various locations and weather conditions. Sheep on snowy fields, sheep in flocks, sheep grazing, sheep running, sheep alone, wooden sheep, stone sheep and cute baby sheep (i.e. lambs). I tried to find out the term for a lover of sheep and the best I can come up with is an "ovinophile" but I am not 100% certain that such a term has been approved by those who guard the gates of the English language.
Though I confess to being an ovinophile, my relationship with the woolly quadrupeds is entirely platonic and any smutty counter-suggestions will be ruthlessly squashed by my legal team!
I give you the heads of seven sheep from my collection...
Number two is my favourite. Its hairstyle is very similar to mine.
ReplyDeleteIf that is true, Lord Peregrine needs to increase your personal allowance so that you can get your hair done at Quintessential Hair & Beauty Rooms.
Delete"I remember Ewe." Frank High Field (Ifield).
ReplyDelete"Ewe Really Got Me" - The Kinks
Delete"All I Wanna Do is Make Love to Ewe" - Heart
I've seen Heart. I met a girl called Baa-bara.
Delete"I Just Want to Dance With Ewe" George Strait.
DeleteThose last two are spectacular. I am going to promptly alert a professor who, like you, "has a thing for sheep." He is Dr. M, the husband of Dana Bug who blogs at danabugseyeview.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteThe last one looks like a professor strolling from his study to the library with his briefcase.
Deletei like the last one because he's the flamboyant show-off in the group!
ReplyDeleteHe seems comfortable in his own skin... I mean fleece.
DeleteThe second and the last sheep look the friendliest. Sheep with horns never look friendly. Great advances in medicine means ovinophile is perfectly treatable nowadays by external application of an ointment.
ReplyDeleteGood job you are in Melbourne buddy!
DeleteWere those photos taken on Ilkley Moor ''baa'' t'hat?
ReplyDeleteSimilar to what I said to Andrew. Good job you are in London!
DeleteI had completely forgotten about your unnatural affection for these animals. Ovinophile, so there is a name for the condition, good to know:)
ReplyDelete"Unnatural"? If I was a Welsh sheep farmer, it would be perfectly natural. Not much pillow talk though.
DeleteI do love the lambs. My favorite stuffed animal as a child was "Lambie." At some point, it disappeared. I am still not over that nor have I forgiven my mother for disappearing it. But that last shot- yes. That is a sheep who is blissed out.
ReplyDeleteWhere oh where has my Lambie gone?
DeleteOver yon hills to the setting sun
Sometimes at night I hear her bleating
Calling me to our final meeting.
Bleating. It is what lambs do. Such a poignant sound.
DeleteI wonder what the word is in German, Spanish, Italian ?
How agreeable to hear the word in its original meaning !
All too often the word has negative associations.
*There's Haggerty bleating on about the Tories again !*
These Tories are wolves in wolves' clothing.
In German, it's blöken.
DeleteWe bear much tendresse as the French say towards lambs.
ReplyDeleteI remember the late Peaches G crying as she watched a lamb having its throat cut in an Arab documentary.
I like eating lamb on the rib and could not kill a lamb.
A friend has a daughter who worked as a shepherd in Scotland.
She has endured a number of unsuccessful leg operations.
Her surgeon told her that the damage was caused from years of walking downhill.
This repetitive strain injury necessitated several metal implants which did not take.
Then there was a bone implant from a donor who had died and these did not take.
The last I heard is that the lady may lose her legs altogether.
Let us remember shepherds who endure much so we can feast on lambs.
And restrict your downhill walking.
May I be so daring as to to correct The Great Haggerty? Just as the female equivalent of a prince is a princess, so the female equivalent of a shepherd is a shepherdess. More important than that - what a tragic tale.
DeleteHaggerty is a dunder-head as Hameldaeme once said.
DeleteShepherdess is a wee bit pre-feminist, squire.
Do you still say chicks?
I made my young sister laugh at this recondite term.
I read from a book about office changes in New York after 9/11.
The top managers used to sit on the highest floors with great views.
Now they have the lowest floors for easy escape in case of attack.
*The high floors are for the chicks in HR,* one male manager said.
My sister was in HR with Save the Children & Red Cross International.
She thought it was a laugh that NY execs call the HR ladies chicks.
By the way the Peaches G documentary was filmed in North Africa.
Poor little soul. A tragic end like her mother.
I like the ram with the black and white markings. There are few sheep here. I would go years without seeing a sheep.
ReplyDeleteI wonder why huge flocks of sheep never ranged across the prairies. Perhaps it's the long, freezing winters.
DeleteHaughty? No. He (she?) has his/her head thrown back a bit and is laughing, probably at the man with a camera. A happy sheep. I saw a lot of sheep in my childhood, these days I only see them "undressed" and hanging in butcher shops. Headless too!
ReplyDeleteYou create an horrific image River... and there was me thinking you were a sweet little granny with a kindly disposition.
DeleteIt is nice to look at sheep as individuals and not just as part of a flock. A bit like humans, I think, and I am sure their interactions and social structures within the herd are nearly as complex as ours.
ReplyDeleteHow does the algorithm at the geograph website count a picture that shows a path leading towards a church, along a field with sheeps on it and a farmhouse in the background?
No. The algorithms could not do that!
DeleteAs for sheep as individuals, I suppose that my pictures make that point. On the whole, humans are also flock animals. Very few of us are hermits.
What a handsome bunch, and who knew there were so many different breeds. The second one looks more like a dog!
ReplyDeleteThere are at least 200 different breeds of sheep in the world.
DeleteI think I would go for photo 2, because she has a lot of crimp in her curls, good for spinning.
ReplyDeleteYou don't care about her personality or her philosophy of life, all you want her for is her wool!
DeleteWe enjoy seeing sheep, they are cute and fuzzy. We spent a week in Pately Bridge one summer, with a field of sheep behind the house we rented, our lives have never been the same since. Waking up to the sights and sounds of sheep.
ReplyDeleteTo my granddaughter "sheep" is not the right word, it's "baa-baa" as in the nursery rhyme.
DeleteMy first husband was called Larry. He absolutely refused to eat lamb.
ReplyDeleteHardly a good reason for dumping him Sue. Was he covered in curly wool?
DeleteI am so impressed with your Geograph thing. If there was something like that around here, I could see myself getting much involved with it.
ReplyDeleteGeograph with my associated photo walks has given me a lot of pleasure since I retired.
DeleteThey all seem very expressive. I'm guessing there's not a lot going on between those ears, though.
ReplyDeleteThey might as well all be wearing red MAGA caps.
DeleteOh, Mr. Pudding. They are all so beautiful. I know I will be thinking of these pictures when one of their brethren lands on my table on Christmas afternoon. And, the Vegetarian Princess will voice her disgust but the rest of us will just carry on as if we didn't know that the creature had a lovely beating heart this time last year.
ReplyDelete