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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

The Water Rail
















Pursuing my current birdy obsession the other day, I was trawling through amazon in search of books about bitterns, and found a total of one: Lord William Percy’s 1951 study Three Studies in Bird Character: Bitterns, Herons and Rails. Annoyingly, the copy I bought hasn’t turned up yet, but in the mean time I can’t resist reproducing this picture I found here of a water rail, known to John Clare (since I mentioned him the other day) as the ‘water craik’, and a species with the most unusual habit of carrying its young in its beak. What a fine photograph.

2 comments:

Roger said...

The bittern features in Raymond Briggs's wonderful Fungus the Bogeyman.

Dr. Charles Kinbote said...

When I see a duck
Out of my window
I sometimes say hello

Pearly feathers
Soggy bread

Oh look
There goes one now

Hello