The following is an extract from "A Celebration of Birds" by Robert
Dougall. Please read it and enjoy:
"It is black and white,of course.with long slate blue legs, and a black
upturned bill; these externals,moreover, are admirably put together, the
legs being long enough to give it dignity, the plied plumage so designed
as to be both simple and striking.And of that asonishing bill-well one
can but say that in specimens and pictures it looks grotesque but in the
living bird it simply could not be otherwise; the whole pattern is
integrated and finished by the gentle upward curve. But these are no
more than the shell-the bust and hip measurements, as it were, of the
Venus de Milo. `As the Avocet walks, each foot is lifted almost to the
horizontal before it is advanced and set down again with feline grace,
and the balance and poise of the bird's movements are a ballerina's
despair, exquisite in their perfection.In flight it has the purposeful
quick beat of so many waders, and the pure white wings edged with ebony
carry the body most nobly as it tapers into the long point of blue legs
stretched beyond the tail.
....Few creatures that I know, except, perhaps, the first-rate,
thorough-bred racehorse, have quite such an air of being a cut above the
company they keep. The richly coloured sheld-duck and the neat
black-headed gull look dumpy and coarse beside it, the neighbouring
peewits cast from very common clay."
A.W.P.Robertson: "Birds Wild and Free"
Can such a description be bettered? I doubt it.
Denise Moore
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