Lindgvist - birds and language!

Welcome to Lindgvist, the website where I post bird photos and go on linguistic tangents. The name is a portmanteau of lind and lingvist, which are Estonian words for bird and linguist, respectively. I'm doing research on English-Estonian translation grammar, still a work in progress, but here I want to share some of the work and maybe some of the "deeper" knowledge from both languages. And of course, I want a feedless place to post my photographs, mostly of birds, since I always find coherent galleries more appealing than a hodgepodge.

Larus argentatus (European herring gulls) are my favourite type of bird, perhaps since I see them almost every day on the neighbouring rooftops. They have wide wingspans already at a few months of age, but it takes a long time for their feathers to turn the beautiful white and grey they get their Estonian name — hõbekajakas, or silver gull — from. Their call, always a yell, seems to take their entire body to produce it, but having visited near one of their nesting colonies, I imagine they just want to be heard. Personal space and acknowledgement, that is what they seem to yearn for, and me in kind, so I feel a melancholic kinship with them (or at least I project it onto them).

Of course, many people have some kind of feeling towards these gulls, since they are a constant presence. What comes to mind is a book about a lonely calligrapher, where a gull visiting her balcony is ascribed magical meaning. Of course, a more realistic take would describe them as protective and agressive — this, as well, is only an outside position. In my view, each gull just has their own thing going on.

Explore!