Kingfisher
£25.00
A lot of lies about herons, from the ‘Lies About Birds’ series (scroll down to read the text). Illustrated with a poor photograph of a paper bird I have made out of old RSPB magazines.
A4 print, mounted (and put in a cellophane bag to prevent escapes).
(Please note that, regretfully, I don’t send work outside of the UK)
1 in stock
“Kingfishers are kingfishers because they are too beak-heavy to be wormbaggers. It’s hard to move around on the ground with a beak that huge, you risk overbalancing and ending up stuck face-first in the ground and the worms will just avoid you. Sit on a branch over a river, however, and overbalancing just means you fall into the water. Fall in enough times and you’re going to fall on a passing fish. Roughly half of the times kingfishers overbalance, closing their eyes in resignation as they do, they fall beak-first on to a fish. They are extraordinarily lucky birds. They’re not overly keen on fish as it happens, and when they do fall beak-first on to one they take it to a branch and bash the hell out of it to punish it for tasting horrible.
You’ll hear a kingfisher before you see one, peeping in disgust at the fish. If you’re lucky you might see a flash of neon blue and wonder if the aliens have landed. They really haven’t. It’s just a kingfisher overbalancing.”
