Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0023094, Sat, 21 Jul 2012 19:37:59 -0600

Subject
SIGHTINGS of a kind
Date
Body
JM: additional echoes from ADa with VN's satire..

Van's eye over his umbrella crook traveled around a carousel of Sapsucker
paperbacks (with that wee striped woodpecker on every spine): ...

JF: Speaking of echoes, I hope I'm allowed to post two pictures I took
today near the Santa Fe Ski Basin (New Mexico) without a thought of Nabokov
in my mind. The first shows two immature Red-naped Sapsuckers. The second
shows a butterfly drinking sap from a hole in the bark of a willow; the
sapsuckers may have made the hole and anyway they had presumably been
drinking from it and eating insects attracted to it. I believe the
butterfly is a Red Admiral, not a common species around here. Apparently
they like sap. (No doubt it makes a nice change from dead rabbit.)

For another Nabokovian connection, there's a Sapsucker Woods at Cornell.
The University has used it, under that name, for bird and other nature studies
since at least 1957.

<
http://books.google.com/books?id=mg4fAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Sapsucker+woods%22+Cornell
>

(The sapsucker found near Cornell is the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, which
the Red-naped has been considered conspecific with.)

Incidentally, considering both the ecological connection and the bold red
and white markings, I wonder whether a thought of the Red Admiral flitted
through Nabokov's mind when he put a sapsucker in Ada.

Jerry Friedman
jerry_friedman@yahoo.com for off-list replies

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