The hawk was minding his own business too, but its business is boofing tall men.
"Boof," the noun, has been around since 1825. It's "A blow that makes a sound like a rapid, brief movement of air" (OED).
I like the village name, Flamstead, which just means "place of the Flemings." There's an annual Flamstead Scarecrow Festival....
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We’re talking lord god king boofoo!
https://youtu.be/Qb21lsCQ3EM?si=ICdHMJ6BXMEIpRyD
JSM
during nesting time that always happens on 16 when golfers walk by the big pine tree..
I assume the people in that house have been arrested and sent to the gulag?
Every spring we have mockingbirds nesting in the trees out front of our house. They aggressively swoop down on passersby to keep their nest and chicks safe. This works well for them, usually. Years ago one of our cats, crossing the front yard, was dive bombed. The cat stopped, watched for the next "boofing" run, leapt up and snatched the bird mid-attack. The lesson, I guess, is be aware of counterattacks.
We had a couple of Harris hawks in the common area behind our house this summer. They're unusual for raptors and they tend to hunt in family groups.
Where is Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse to ask what "Boof" means?
Maynard had the same thought: "boofing" made quite the appearance at the Kavanaugh hearings, and my recollection is that several Democrats claimed it was a made-up word that had dark and sinister meanings.
The plain onomatopoeiac interpretation would imply a synonym for "hit" in all its current meanings.
Boof! Kav-brah will drink to that.
If you want to get rid of the bird, just tell the coppers it's praying for the clinic, and going after their clientele.
Our cat has jumped 5 feet in the air from a sitting position to grab a fly between its paws. I'm sure she could get one the birds that constantly dive bomb her, but she doesn't. She's more interested in trying to catch the squirrel that is always running along the fence. No luck so far.
Hawk could be protecting its nest. Or maybe it just doesn't like tall men.
Invention Idea: Poisoned meat helmets!
Althouse, didn't you post a picture of a Harris hawk on a cafe? Wait, maybe the famous garage mahal did?
I have a Puerto Rican friend in NYC (how come you’re not wearing the ribbon) who uses the word “boofed it” to mean swiped, stolen. I believe it’s meant as a less harsh tone than stealing.
Boofland Loyalty Song? Every kid in Detroit knew the words...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfidLT6fG1U
https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/television/2017/06/29/jerry-booth-jingles-dies-detroit-tv-obituary/433390001/
In the Caribbean, to 'boof' someone is to be unkind. "Why you wanna boof me up like dat?" you might say, responding to an insult about your personal appearance....
Harris's hawks are not native to the British Isles. Parabuteo unicinctus is in fact a South American raptor with an extreme northern range that includes several of our southwestern states. They are valued by falconers because a Harris's hawk has the hunting prowess of a large Accipiter, such as a Goshawk, but with a more gentle temperament. Furthermore, their cooperative hunting skills present interesting possibilities in modern falconry that were not part of the sport historically.
Harris's hawks like to land on heads. In falconry, the hunting bird is either trained to fly to the glove, usually the worn on left fist though many falconry cultures from Central Asia train their eagles to fly to the right fist, or to the lure, a weighted leather bag shaped roughly like the outline of a bird swung on a line by the falconer. In general, the true falcons fly to the lure, all the others fly to the fist. In the case of the Harris's hawk, some birds will refuse the glove as a landing pad, and will choose the falconers head as a perch. The exact reason is not known, but it is not aggression, far from it. Similar behavior can be seen in wild Harris's hawk hunting teams. One will land on a favored perch, such as a Sagauro cactus, and its partner will land on its back. As many as three hawks have been observed stacked on a fourth bird like a totem pole. One speculation suggests this stacking is a means to avoid the cactus spines -- sounds reasonable, but who knows? All that is known is a head-sitter likes to land on your head. So if you're the falconer, wear a hat and be pleased to know it's a sure sign your hunting bird trusts you.
In the case of the Flamstead head-boofer, this is probably a lost falconer's bird in search of the falconer.
I was dive bombed by a Bald Eagle once. Out in the woods on company property, I was verifying the presence of an occupied nest for an environmental report. Fortunately the trees didn't allow a clear attack path but the bird circled overhead and escorted me for nearly a half mile as I left.
Green blight. Colonization. Urbanization. Birds are people, too.
The guy's name lends itself to headlines too. "Predator Attacks Unwary Boys."
"Boof". One of those words that kids use to keep the parents mystified, and maybe don't even know what it means themselves. And the meaning apparently keeps changing.
Where I grew up in the Wild West, it was an occasional abbreviation of "BuFu", itself a euphemism for anal sex, and used mostly for ball-busting insults of other boys along the lines of the coarser sort of Roman poet like Catullus. You wouldn't boof your girlfriend, even if she were game enough to allow the act to be performed upon her, but you might accuse a pair of friends who were late to a scheduled rendezvous of stopping to boof in the bushes instead of getting to where they were supposed to be.
Nowadays I am told that instead, the word mostly gets used to refer to the practice of instilling recreational drugs in the anus, to be quickly and completely absorbed by the rectal membranes. Does not sound appealing to me, whether applying or receiving the treatment.
I suppose it's similar to all the other disgusting slang terms for deviant sexual practices like "Dirty Sanchez" and "Cleveland Steamer". Potty-mouthed, perverted adolescent boys love to talk about it, but not a single one of them has ever actually done it. It's always "my cousin's friend's brother in Oklahoma".
This is the first time I've heard of it being used to refer to a blow or strike to the head. Must be an English thing.
The tall men of the village should be thankful the hawk isn't boffing them.
Adonai’s messenger to misguided England.
Said in my best Sir Alec Guinness voice: "now that's a [word] I've not heard in a long time..."
I expected the notice of "boof" to include a reference to the Kavenaugh hearings.
In The Staircase, an owl attack is suggested as what killed Kathleen Peterson.
https://www.vulture.com/2018/06/the-staircase-netflix-owl-theory-explained.html
It's protecting young nesting somewhere nearby.
rhhardin writes, "It's protecting young nesting somewhere nearby."
Not likely. Parabuteo unicinctus, aka Harris's hawk, is a New World tropical raptor native to a range extending from northern Argentina to southern New Mexico. There are many of these birds in the UK, but they are all in the custody of licensed falconers who have obtained their birds mainly from breeders in the United States. There may be an escapee or two at large, but there is no wild breeding population anywhere in Europe, nor are there any legally entitled breeders in the UK. Cold springtime temperatures put a hard limit on the breeding range of P. unicinctus, otherwise the species would have established breeding populations in the southeastern United States long ago.
As I stated earlier, the Flamstead boofer is a lost falconer's bird.
I saw an autobiography of a hawk on the David Burge Iowahawk x site the other day.
The title was “I’ll Crap Down Your Throat, Fing dare me!” You can look it up.
Boof. Buff. Buffet (Jimmy, not Phoebe).
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