As for me not knowing the differences between them, not something that comes up in my life these days.

David – I don’t know how the bark got that way. I’d always assumed it was something natural, but actually it could have been kids using it for archery practice, or something, fifty years ago. Who knows?

Zhoen – Yeah. Don’t confuse shrews with moles, though – two different families of insectivores.

The shrew… well, there’s a reminder that there are a thousand tiny lives happening all around us, behind and beneath the surfaces of our world. Also, the life of a small mammal is not a particularly secure one! I love the way you link it to it’s ecological role, with this tiny creature becoming a balance-point in the course of evolution.

I especially love your photographs of bark–this one has a marvelous sense of estrangement. It takes my eye a minute to settle, and that crooked young sapling seems strange, like some projection from another realm. The shrew on your glove, with its two little openings: so pathetic.

Teju, you’re welcome to send me some clarinet music. I’m very fond of klezmer and of Carl Nielsen’s clarinet concerto, both of which treat the clarinet as the voice of the soul.

I went walking in Morningside Park two days ago, after the snow fell. There wasn’t enough of it to give total cover, and the variegation of it on the grass and the rock-face at the edge of the park made me think of pied-beauty.

I’ve got some twentieth-century solo clarinet music for you, if you want an oblique reminder of the swans.