King of the Birds

Just yesterday at work I was reading an analysis of Pushkin's "The Tale of the Fisherman and the Golden Fish", and the author spent a great deal of time on a bit that had been cut from the manuscript by Pushkin before publishing. It dealt with the fisherman seeing his wife as the Pope, seated on a tower with a crown on her head, and on the head a wren. The wren, Bykov tells us, is remarkable for the contrast between its tiny body and large voice, and is an attribute of supreme power - representing the court poet. He also recounts a German story about how, when the birds decided to choose as their king the one that flew highest, the wren hid himself on the back of the eagle and thus ended up highest of all... Well, be that as it may, these birds are indeed tiny - and very, very loud. Here's one last shot of one of the pair that nest in my father's backyard.